Singapore In Queensland

PART VI

ON LOCATION

22

Singapore In Queensland

    Exactly what plant nursery had been able to provide Derry Dawlish with a selection of frangipani in full flower Ann Kitchener, for one, wasn’t asking. No, well, the Queensland weather was very pleasant: possibly he had got them locally, possibly he hadn’t had to have them flown in from Hawaii— Not asking. All she knew was, back in NSW her mum’s one was still looking like something from Mars—strangely pointed, finished-looking leafless branches, right—and as a matter of fact Rosie reported that her mum’s one (one of the bright pink ones, gee, very up-market) was likewise. Right, it did drop its flaming leaves in the pool, Ann, but that was the way she liked it. She claimed it was worth it for the way the pink petals floated on the turquoise water—well, no, it was the pool that was turquoise—but the mug that hadda unblock the drain when they clogged it up didn’t admire the effect. The leaves? No, he’d given in and hired a bloke for them, Ann, it wasn’t worth the heart attack. Right, goddit.

    Well, be that as it might, Adam’s Singapore hideaway—the old bungalow on the right as you looked at Big Rock Bay with your back to the water—was now surrounded with flowering frangipani. Two shades of pink plus the ordinary ones that with those thick, creamy petals and the bright gold centres weren’t as ordinary as all that. The much larger hibiscus bushes and assorted palms that he’d also ordered in merely formed a background to them, but the way the crew had got the grass to cover up their pots was real clever. Oh, usual, was it, Bernie? Oh, fake grass, unrolled it like a rug, right, goddit. Never mind, it looked good.

    Unfortunately the tides, or possibly God, presumably He was in charge of them, weren’t co-operating all that well with Derry Dawlish, but then could you have absolutely everything here below and, in fact, who cared? Those that didn’t have money or reputations riding on the thing, were, by and large, having a whale of a time. Tony was in his element, snapping madly in bathers and an open Hawaiian shirt (no, well, Bali shirt, dated back to their honeymoon) with a green and gold “Go, Aussie, Go” baseball cap, make that baseball-style, unofficial Olympics cap, on backwards, but in these surroundings no-one even gave him a second glance. Or a first, actually. Kirrian had given in completely and come up with him: whether or not she was anticipating her leave not absolutely clear, though this wasn’t because Tony hadn’t explained it. They didn’t yet have kids so she’d managed it easily. Though judging by the inordinate amount of time they were spending in their motel cabin, their first would be arriving in nine months’ time. Dawlish was letting her be an extra in the bathing-beach scenes in Big Rock Bay because she had a lovely figure, a gorgeous tan, and apparently didn’t mind being crammed into a Fifties bathing-suit with a modesty skirt that managed not to be modest at all: it didn’t cover the pudenda, in fact it rode up and exposed the spot quite pointedly. Floral: yellow and pink on white. They’d tried her in one that was yellow against bright blue but Dawlish had given a scream of: “That fucking thing’s FLICKERING!” and had had to be forcibly prevented from wrenching it off her bodily. She had been slightly surprised by the Fifties hairdo he’d made one of the hairdressers give her, but mollified by Yvonne’s offer to straighten and re-cut it for her once the filming was over.

    A generous offer had also been extended to Ann, but no way. Sixteen-hour days in the Queensland sun with a boned bra in your bathers? There were sun-umbrellas to retreat under, yes, but even so, Isabelle Bell was doing a roaring trade in sunscreen. That real smooth operator, Lucas Something, that had come out from England, had drawn D.D. aside and murmured something about melanoma and future lawsuits so he’d stopped shouting about the sunscreen making the bodies too shiny and had let nice Jimmy Fairfax, who was Amaryllis Nuttall’s husband, put up his own special sun-umbrella that had genuine Aussie sun-filter stuff in it to shield her very white English skin. No-one, least of all Ann, had pointed out that Amaryllis must be sixty, in spite of the lovely figure, so realistically there probably wouldn’t be time to work up a skin cancer, let alone a lawsuit. This was only partly because they all loathed Dawlish, it was also because Amaryllis was very, very popular with all the cast and crew.

    Ann had just collected a couple of bottles of spring water from the motel shop—yep, roaring trade in them, as well, in fact the Bells had taken a whole truckload just the other day, the truckie then spending considerable time on the front verandah of the office-cum-shop-cum-manager’s unit with a frostie in his hand, next to Scott Bell on his planter’s chair with a frostie in his hand. It being a day on which Dawlish had been filming Lily Rose in a Fifties bikini with a beach towel over the plaster cast, and Dot in a Fifties bikini and legs, on the beach.

    She wandered over to the big green sun-umbrella and sat down next to Amaryllis with a sigh. “Like a refill?”

    “Thank you, Ann,” said Amaryllis with her lovely smile. “Ooh—cold!” she approved, having sipped.

    “Yeah, they’re out of Isabelle’s own fridge, not the shop’s one that they don’t stay in long enough to chill.”

    “Quick, put some in this!” said Jimmy with a laugh, producing a thermos.

    Obligingly Ann filled it for him.

    “That’s a very sensible dress, Ann,” Amaryllis then approved. “Just right for this climate!”

    It was cut like a full-length shirt in very light-weight cotton, possibly a cheesecloth, didn’t like being ironed. Long sleeves. So far it and the continual applications of sunscreen had done a pretty good job of stopping Ann from being burned. True, it was a bright sunflower yellow, not precisely her colour, but who cared? She normally wore it open or half-buttoned over her new bikini, as now. “Yeah. I got it at a very expensive Duty Free boutique at the airport in Brisbane,” she explained, considerably refraining from the vernacular “Brizzie” in view of—um, well, of their niceness, not so much the fact that they were Brits. “Not Duty Free, of course, since I wasn’t headed overseas.”

    Their faces fell. “Not in Cairns?” asked Jimmy sadly.

    “No, haven’t even been up there, Jimmy.”

    “We were wondering if it might be worthwhile making the time for a shopping expedition.”

    Amaryllis’s outfit didn’t count: she was in a black Fifties bathing-suit with a modesty skirt that worked and a tasteful bunch of white roses sort of worked into, nay, worked into and supported by, the thing’s cups. An unlikely effect on anything less than an evening gown—yes, but Bernie had assured them that Derry had found just that effect in a real Fifties epic. However, Ann looked thoughtfully at Jimmy’s smotheringly heavy cotton-knit tee-shirt with an Aboriginal design of a turtle and lots of extra dots on it. And some large, almost-oval splodges, possibly turtle eggs? The tee was deep purple and the design was watermelon pink in some sort of raised, plastic paint substance. Standard tourist-trap tee, in fact. “Think you’d only find the same sort of stuff, Jimmy.”

    “Nobody’s got the joke,” he admitted plaintively.

    Amaryllis collapsed in giggles immediately, so Ann gave in and grinned. “No. It’s normal out here.”

    “Where would we go to see some real Aboriginal art?” he asked sadly.

    Uh… London? New York? “Um, I’ve seen some in Canberra in the art gallery there, but it was modern, and there wasn’t very much of it.. Um, well, haven’t been down that way for ages, but the South Australian Museum? That’s in Adelaide. Um, well, I couldn’t find anything in it except a room full of small geological specimens, but… The art gallery there’s got some really good modern stuff: only a few pieces, though. Well, if you went to Alice Springs there are a couple of galleries that have really excellent modern pieces, plus about five hundred places that have faked-up dreck, but I’ve never seen the really old stuff there.”

    “Bark paintings?” said Jimmy without hope.

    “Uh—tried the museum in Sydney?”

    They would try it when they went back there.

    “We thought,” said Amaryllis, looking wistfully at the pink dots round his turtle, “that we might see some of the really good modern dot painting.”

    “Yeah. Most of those are in private hands. No, well, as I say, the art gallery in Adelaide’s got a few really excellent pieces.”

    “Jimmy says it’s nearly a thousand miles,” she said sadly.

    Blink. “Yeah—no, from Sydney, that’d be, Amaryllis,” explained Ann kindly. “Driving distance. More like, um, well, getting on for three thousand K from here. Um, sixteen or seventeen hundred miles? No, well, fly over from Sydney, easy: forget how long it takes: about three hours, I think. Well, I always get muddled because of the time difference!” she admitted cheerfully.

    “Time difference?” they croaked.

    “Uh—only half an hour,” said Ann weakly. “They’re on Central Time, we’re on Eastern Time.”

    They swallowed, and smiled weakly.

    “Ask David Walsingham, he lives over there,” she offered.

    “Yes, but I doubt that he’d have bothered to notice how long the flight takes!” replied Jimmy with a grin.

    “No… I don’t think he’s very happy,” murmured Amaryllis, sounding even vaguer than she normally did. Ann now had a suspicion that this extra-vagueness generally veiled a piece of extra-perceptiveness, so she didn’t take this remark at anything like face-value. And, sure enough, after a moment the actress added: “Dot seems very taken with Lucas… He is an attractive man, of course.”

    “Petra Comyngton certainly thought so, three or four years back,” agreed Jimmy drily. “Oh—sorry, Ann. You may not have seen Derry’s Babbidge Abroad.”

    Ann had, actually: it hadn’t had much of a popular success, but the critics had liked it and in fact both the gurus on SBS had given it five stars, a very rare occurrence indeed. She hadn’t realised it was one of D.D.’s. It was a gloomy little offering, mainly shot in sepia, about an Englishman who got caught in North Africa—looking uncomprehendingly at large Egyptian artefacts, mainly—at the beginning of the War. He was a neat little person who was spending an inheritance from an aunt on doing something cultural. All the other people on the boat he went on up the Nile—Ann had thought at the time that this bit was probably pinched from Agatha Christie—had looked down their noses at him: they were all much more upper-class and educated than him. And had duly all come to very sticky ends, whether they had dashed Home to do their duty or done their level best to stay on in the sun and escape it. Babbidge wasn’t quite a Forrest Gump, but tending that way: he came through all his trials and tribulations completely unscathed, both physically and mentally, ending up back home in a nice little villa in Rye-something, boring all his acquaintances horribly with his souvenirs. –Ann hadn’t been able to find this town in the office’s big atlas, and similarly Speedy Gonzales’s helpful, if superior, effort to find it in the Britannica CD-ROM had failed (heh, heh), so she had concluded that, realistic though those sets had looked, the film had made the place up.

    “Ruislip,” murmured Amaryllis.

    Ann jumped. “Yeah! The place he retired to, right? To his aunty’s villa. Um, so it is a real place, Amaryllis?”

    “Yes, a lovely little town,” she said with her uncritical smile.

    “As real as Alice Springs!” added Jimmy with a laugh.

    “Hah, hah.” Ann was aware that he’d been re-reading Nevil Shute for his trip Downunder. True, he had also re-read Oscar and Lucinda, that’d give him a real pic of 21st-century Aussie life. Not. “You were really good as the snobby lady on the boat, Amaryllis.”

    “Thank you, Ann!” she said, twinkling at her. “It was dreadfully hot, wasn’t it, Jimmy? Much, much hotter than this. Of course Derry insisted on using the real temples and so forth.”

    “Yes. In sepia,” said Jimmy on a sour note. “Not to mention real Thirties underwear.”

    “Yes. Well, one drew the line at stockings and suspender-belts, Ann,” explained Amaryllis, “except in the close-ups where Derry wanted to stress them.”

    “Um, yeah,” said Ann limply. “Um, the costumes were wonderful.”

    “Yes: that was largely Bernie, of course,” she said placidly. “The costume designer that Derry had originally chosen was dreadful, so he sacked him. And the little assistant was a nice girl, and she knew an awful lot about the styles, but she wasn’t very practical about putting them into reality. Do you remember the blue dress, Jimmy? I couldn’t sit down in it. But it didn’t matter, because then Derry decided he wanted only white and shades of cream.”

    “With a little khaki and tan for the fellows!” agreed Jimmy, grinning his good-natured grin. “Yes: the little assistant—what was her name, darling?”—“Something Welsh, or was it Irish?” offered Amaryllis.—“Something like that. Not Caitlin? –No. Sorry, Ann! Anyway, she had hysterics and had to be restored with the First Aid box, a belt of brandy from someone’s flask, and a long lie-down in Amaryllis’s trailer. So Bernie took over—told her what to do.”

    “I put lots of aloe vera on her,” contributed Amaryllis. “Well, it’s very soothing, if not a direct cure for hysterics!” she added, twinkling at Ann.

    “Mm, it was a nice brand, wasn’t it?” Jimmy agreed. “But I haven’t been able to find it here. Anyway, Derry was running over budget as usual, so Lucas came out and tore a strip off him and went over the location accounts in person—several more people had hysterics, as you can imagine—and that was how Petra Comyngton met him.”

    “Um, yes,” said Ann uncertainly. “I see. Which one was she, again?”

    Jimmy’s eyes met his wife’s. He grinned. “So much for fame! Well, insofar as the thing had a leading lady, Ann, she was it. The dark girl with the huge eyes who was only somebody’s poor relation, not the high-born lady she was pretending to be—turned out that was her cousin—and got herself up the spout by some terribly stiff-upper-lip officer.”

    “Oh, yes! Wasn’t he horrible?” said Ann happily. “And then he disappeared.”

    “Swallered up in the desert,” agreed Jimmy with relish.

    “Yes. But she was all right in the end, she married that nice gay man who needed a wife to cover up the pretty little boyfriend in Casablanca—wasn’t he sweet?” said Ann pleasedly.

    There was a stunned moment of silence and then Jimmy Fairfax collapsed in streaming hysterics.

    “Have I missed the point?” asked Ann cheerfully.

    Smiling placidly, Amaryllis handed Jimmy a tissue from her large box. “Partly, Ann, dear, though some of us did warn Derry that it might not work with a modern audience, unless he really stressed the point. It was supposed to be tragic, you see, only of course darling Murray and little Freddy made them very sympathetic characters, and that house of theirs with all the coloured tiles was delicious, wasn’t it? One couldn’t imagine a nicer life, really, especially after all her trials and tribulations: it would be very restful,” she concluded earnestly.

    “Yeah, well, that’s certainly the impression I got!” agreed Ann. “Um, did you say Freddy?”

    “Yes: Freddy Winters, a dear boy.”

    “I thought he was a genuine Moroccan or something,” she said feebly.

    “Yes: he has got those Mediterranean looks, hasn’t he? The accent was very good, and Derry was very pleased with him, but of course there’s very little future in that sort of part.”

    “Even these days, where the heroine ending up with two gays constitutes a happy ending!” agreed Jimmy. “Who can I tell that’d appreciate it? Well, Harry, of course. He’d certainly have made a better fist of that script. Bernie, naturally!” he said, smiling at Ann. “Well, everybody who’s ever worked for Derry, really!” he concluded, laughing.

    “Yes,” agreed Ann, a trifle limply. “I sort of wish you’d never told me… I mean, I was thinking that at least someone came out of it okay, but that makes all the characters ending up down the tubes, doesn’t it? Except old Babbidge, of course. That was meant to be tragic, that your character ended up as the mistress of that fat old Egyptian, was it?” she said to Amaryllis.

    “Oh, yes. That was Ronny Morris: he’s a dear, really, but he does specialise in unsympathetic parts. I did try to make it look tragic.”

    “Yes, that’s okay, Amaryllis, it did. I was snivelling so much that I missed all the next scene, I never did cotton on to what happened to that nasty bloke with the beard!”

    Jimmy began, grinning broadly: “Swallered up by—”

    “Shut up, Jimmy!” said Ann with a laugh. “I don’t care!”

    “I’ve forgotten, actually,” he admitted. “Was it the sea or the desert, darling?”

    “Who?” replied Amaryllis simply.

    “Chris Harrison’s character. The beard and the sneer. Think he was one of the ones that was stealing priceless Egyptian artefacts.”

    “I don’t remember. Half of them did drown, that’s right… And some of them fell out of an aeroplane.”

    “Shot down,” translated Jimmy, grinning.

    “Oh, yes… Well, it was silly, really,” admitted Amaryllis in her placid way. “But Petra Comyngton was quite good.”

    “Even if she didn’t manage to make her fate look tragic for Ann! Yes: she managed that not-quite-authentic top-drawer thing quite well, didn’t she?”

    “Yes. By that time Lucas had arrived, of course.”

    Silence. Ann wondered frantically if that had meant, vague though it had sounded, what she was thinking it couldn’t possibly have meant. No, well, maybe she’d only been implying that the thing with Lucas Roberts had gingered Petra Comyngton’s performance up a bit? Er…

    She became aware that Jimmy was eyeing her wryly. “Amaryllis is extremely sharp about people,” he said on a dry note. “And leaving people to pick up her implications or not has become a habit, I’m afraid.”

    “Oh, was I doing it again?” said Amaryllis, sounding super-vague. “I’m sorry, Ann: I didn’t mean to do it to you.”

    “No: she likes you,” explained Jimmy, now grinning once more.

    “Um—thanks!” said Ann, reddening and laughing.

    “Yes, well, you see, Petra is a wonderful mimic, and that just is Lucas, what Jimmy said. How did you put it, again, darling? Not quite top-drawer?”

    “Not-quite-authentic top-drawer, I think.”

    “Yes,” said Amaryllis with the utmost placidity. “That’s it.”

    Alas, at this point Ann Kitchener of Sydney, Australia, broke down and laughed until she cried.

    “Britain’s bad enough now: it must have been terrible in the Thirties for anyone with social ambitions,” said Amaryllis thoughtfully.

    “Yes. Stop,” said Jimmy, handing Ann a handful of tissues.

    “Thanks! Oh, dear! Yeah, I’ve got it, Amaryllis,” she admitted. “Um, well, this fling with this Petra lady: presumably it wasn’t serious?”

    “Not on his part, Ann, no. I think Petra would have quite liked it to be—though at that age one does tend to have these location things, rather… But you see, she’s only an actress.”

    Ann gulped. After quite some time she managed to croak: “I suppose they might not have suited. But what the Hell’s he hanging out for? Wasn’t the wife a rich businessman’s daughter?”

    “Rich stockbroker. Lovely house in Surbiton itself,” said Jimmy with a wink.

    “Never heard—Oh, good grief! Like The Good Life?”

    “Mm-hm. Well, we haven’t a clue what he’s hanging out for: we find the chap unreadable, don’t we, Amaryllis? But I have to admit, neither of us thinks it’s dear little Dot.”

    Ann looked warily at Amaryllis but she was just staring out to sea, looking vague. Ouch. So much for Dot ever becoming the third Mrs Lucas Roberts, then.

    “That’s her,” said Bernie very quietly in Ann’s ear.

    Ann nodded gleefully. From a short distance, Lily Rose Rayne’s other cousin was exactly like her and Dot. Close up, you could see that Molly’s eyes were grey-green, though they were the same shape as Rosie’s, and that her mouth was wider. But from this distance— Triplets: right.

    “They all seem very cheerful,” she murmured.

    “Wouldn’t you?” he returned with a grin. “No, well,” he said, considerately waiting until Ann’s shaking and spluttering had died down: “Rosie’s very cheerful because John’s revealed that he’s definitely taken that posting in Portsmouth. Think his orders have actually been cut. –That is the phrase,” he said, as Ann goggled at him. “In fact, Harry was checking it with him only yesterday, and wrote it down in genuine biro in his working script.”

    “Cut from what?” she croaked. “Oh, forget it, they’re all mad anyway.”

    “Er—yes. The armed forces? Merely the British armed forces? Or are you singling out the Royal Navy?”

    Nothing was happening on set except that Rosie, Dot, Molly and Isabelle (what was she doing there?—Forget it) were all giggling madly, so Ann was enabled to reply evilly: “Guess again, mate.”

    “The whole of the male sex: right,” conceded Bernie in tones of extreme gloom.

    “Yes. –Where did that third copy of those extraordinarily modest yet extraordinarily sexy bathers come from?” she asked with interest, eyeing the three identical bathing beauties in dark puce. Ya might not think—no. But the effect, with those palest gold curls that managed not to be yellow and not to be platinum— Yeah.

    “It’s an extra copy that Wardrobe very sensibly made after they discovered that it’s very difficult to get a form-fitting bathing suit on over a plaster cast, even though it is only to the knee, now, and after Derry had hysterics when he discovered that some brilliant brain had slit a leg-hole a bit and sewn it together again when it was on.”

    “That’s very clear,” replied Ann cordially.

    “H’I thank yoow,” returned Bernie sepulchrally in strangely familiar accents. Something to do with the really bad fuzzy English movies the ABC screened very, very late on a Sunday night regardless of the fact that ninety percent of the viewing public hadda be at work in about six hours’ time?

    “What is that from? –Don’t bother, I won’t retain it. Right, well, what with the anticipation and the cut orders, I can understand Rosie being extra-cheerful, but what’s got into Dot?”

    “Who, not what,” said Bernie drily.

    Ann goggled at where Euan Keel was lying back on a padded sun-lounger under a giant sun-umbrella with his sunglasses on over what would’ve been her bet, closed eyes. He was certainly emanating “I’m ignoring this lot.”

    “Guess again.”

    “Icy Lucas Roberts?” she hissed, the eyes bolting from her head. “The man you love to hate? Ugh! –Hey, know who he reminds me of?”

    Resignedly Bernie waited for her to say “Robson Green:” they all—

    “The Ralph Fiennes character in The English Patient!” hissed Ann, shuddering.

    Bernie thought that possibly she meant the Ralph Fiennes character in something else, possibly Schindler’s List, but he nodded kindly anyway. And admitted drily to himself that he was quite relieved that Ann didn’t seem to have fallen, like most of the other females on location with them, for Lucas Roberts’s icy charm. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

    “Um, the other day Amaryllis and Jimmy sort of said she didn’t have a hope there,” she croaked.

    “In that case,” returned Bernie calmly, “she doesn’t have a hope there.”

    Ann thought it over. “They did say of becoming the third Mrs Lucas Roberts. I thought it was just a figure of speech.”

    “No, it wouldn’t have been.”

    At the moment there was no sign of Lucas. Ann looked at the giggling, bathing-suited Dot. “It’s a bit off, isn’t it? I mean, she must be half his age!”

    “No; I don’t think there’d be as much as fifteen years between them.”

    “In that case he just gives the impression of being as old as the frozen glaciers of ruddy Iceland itself!”

    “Glaciers are frozen,” he murmured.

    “Shut up!” said Ann crossly, hunching into herself.

    Cautiously Bernie took her elbow: would she shrug him off? No, she didn’t. “Sorry, Ann. I entirely agree with you, actually: it is a bit off. On the other hand, I suppose that poor old Lucas is as entitled as any man.”

    Ann chewed on her lip for a bit, finally admitting: “Yeah. Sorry. I was forgetting you must have known him for ages.”

    “For as long as I’ve known Derry, certainly. He hasn’t had either a happy or an easy life. Most of Double Dee’s employees would claim that it’s largely his own fault, but I don’t agree. He was a bright working-class boy with a pair of abysmally stupid parents: the sort who take a perverse delight in holding their kids back. They stuck him in a dead-end factory job the minute he was old enough to leave school. Their claim was that he was lucky to have a job at all, of course. They weren’t particularly badly off: the father had never been out of work and the mother had had a fairly steady series of factory jobs. The year he started at Double Dee was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and they managed a holiday in Marbella. I’m not saying they weren’t entitled to it, but I am saying that if they could afford that, they could have afforded to let their son finish school.”

    “Mm. Um, who told you that?”

    “Not him,” said Bernie, squeezing her arm a bit. “Gareth: he was in an expansive mood, for once. No, well, he’s a working-class lad himself, but he was lucky enough to have really supportive parents.”

    “I see,” said Ann, suddenly awarding him a brilliant smile.

    Bernie blinked. “What?”

    “Nothing. Well, you remembered it all.”

    “Uh—yeah, I am human, you know.”

    “There’s lots as aren’t,” replied Ann in a vague voice, looking hungrily at the triplet bathing-suits on the set. “I wish he’d get here, the anticipation is killing me! –I think I was going to ask you, way back when, why in God’s name are those bathing-suits that colour?”

    “Basically because Derry’s fixated on Marilyn Monroe.”

    “Thanks!” replied Ann indignantly.

    “No, true. How To Marry A Millionaire. The dark puce was an evening dress, but at one point she was parading around in a bathing-suit cut just like that, and very high heels, the flimsy excuse being a fashion parade in an expensive shop. No, well, I think the girls were all models, I suppose it wasn’t as unlikely as some.”

    “No. –I see, you had to have wedgies because of the sand,” said Ann wisely.

    The female mind. “Er, yes. Well, even Derry could see that if he wanted Dot to walk, high-heeled sandals were going to sink right in.”

    “Mm. –Come on!” hissed Ann under her breath, jigging a bit.

    Smiling, Bernie stopped talking, hugged her arm very tight, and waited in gleeful anticipation…

    The presence approached, surrounded by PAs (Gareth was looking horribly morose, had there been a recent explosion?), EDs (Lucas was looking unreadable, which didn’t mean either that there hadn’t been a recent explosion or that he didn’t thoroughly appreciate and enjoy the privilege of getting up Dot Mallory), luscious girlfriends (poor Miff was looking depressed: oh, Christ, did that mean the explosion had been at her?) and assorted persons carrying clipboards and just looking generally harried.

    He arrived. A tingling silence prevailed.

    “Get that Bell woman off my set,” he ordered the ambient air. “And by God, if those reflectors aren’t right this time, heads will roll!”

    No-one told him the reflectors were right today and Isabelle Bell came off the set, though not particularly fast, and joined Bernie and Ann. Bernie raised his eyebrows slightly. She winked.

    “I don’t think we need two Lily Roses; do we?” he said on an acid note.—Nothing.—“DOT! GET OFF THE FUCKING SET, YOU LITTLE CRETIN!”

    The body that was artistically posed in three-quarters profile to His Magnificentness dusted possibly imaginary sand off itself in a perfunctory way, and said: “Aw, don’tcha want me? Okay.” And walked slowly off his set.

    And that left two Lily Roses. One lounging on the official Lily Rose beach towel with her leg in a plaster cast, and one sitting up at the end of it with her back to the presence. And the very nice legs stretched out in what most of those present recognised gleefully as a D.D.-ordained Lily Rose pose.

    “We don’t need a STAND-IN!” he bellowed. “What cretin authorised THAT?”

    Nothing. Several people might have been perceived, by anyone less self-absorbed than the Great Director, to be shaking slightly, however.

    “Gareth! Did you authorise—”

    “No,” replied Gareth sourly.

    “Then GET THAT WOMAN OFF MY SET!”

    Nothing.

    Then Rosie murmured: “I think he means you.”

    And Dot, looking completely poker-face, went over and held out her hand to the third puce-bathing-suited figure and helped her to rise. They turned slowly, hand-in-hand. Their figures were identical—to the millimetre.

    Derry was observed to stagger and if it hadn’t been for the names he’d been heard calling Miff only yesterday—she’d wanted to be an extra in her 21st-century bikini—Bernie might even have felt sorry for him.

    You could have heard a pin drop on the sand of Big Rock Bay.

    Then he gasped: “Who—who—?”

    Still nobody spoke. Though Dot stuck her chin out and looked as if she’d like to. The pause lengthened…

    “’Nother cousin, Derry,” said Rosie in a bored voice. “Like us, isn’t she?”

    And at that the entire chorus of staggered observers not in the know, cast and crew in the know, and those who had made a pretty good guess, broke down in shrieks of laughter. Not excluding those who, like Bernie, were reflecting that it really was a bit hard on poor old Derry and that Rosie Haworth was a bloody hard case.

    The location shooting ground on its weary way. True, Bernie’s bits were all right. As far as they could be with Derry directing. Other people’s bits weren’t going so good. Apparently Derry had got Varley Knollys, the writer, out here specifically in order to contradict his every suggestion, force Harry to make a counter-suggestion, and then rip it to shreds. Not, of course, then going back to Varley’s original suggestion. As about five hundred people had by now intimated in Bernie’s hearing, it was true that Knollys couldn’t write dialogue. It was also true that he was an up-himself prick, but then, Bernie had always known that. Well, he’d had a strong suspicion when Simeon’s Quest was first published and then been very sure of it when it won a literary prize and Knollys appeared on Parkinson. Harry, though not refraining from shouting at both Varley and Derry, was in fact taking it in his stride: it was all completely normal to him. As Bernie explained cheerfully to the shuddering Ann, who’d confessed that hitherto she’d felt Jim’s blue pencil was pretty bad.

    The humidity remained about the same but as the actual temperature hovered between twenty-five and twenty-seven degrees, most people found it bearable. And of course those who were sleeping at the motel had the advantage of the Bells’ air conditioning. The bedrooms in the pub did have it, too, but only the noisy sort of room unit fixed in the immovably nailed-shut window, where the choice was between lying awake all night listening to the thing roaring and clattering, or lying awake all night sweating. As John and Rosie were at the pub, Bernie mentioned this point delicately to Rosie fairly early on in the piece; after all the unfortunate woman was bloody Derry’s big star, and her cousin was the motel-keeper’s best friend: surely a few strings might be pulled—? But she merely replied blankly: “Eh? It’s not hot. Actually it’s bloody good to be warm for a change.” Bernie responded with a faint: “Is John sleeping?” To which she replied cheerfully, without an instant’s pause for thought: “’Course!” Anyone’s guess—quite. Shamingly, he found he didn’t have the guts to tackle John Haworth on the point, nice chap though he undoubtedly was.

    Derry of course was ensconced in the largest motel cabin, as usual sleeping like a log. To start with, Miff was with him. Then she wasn’t.

    “He what?” croaked Bernie into the phone at around nine-thirty of a pitch-black tropic evening. To Derry’s annoyance they were so far north, that was, near to the equator, that there was almost no twilight. Certainly no useable twilight that could have been enhanced with huge spotlights and giant reflectors and etcetera. And, alas, no glorious tropical sunsets either. Or sunrises; he’d had the hapless crews up well before dawn for over a week but the Almighty hadn’t obliged.

    “He’s chucked me out,” sniffled Miff. “He suh-suh-said I was a little tramp and I was making the bed too huh-huh-hot! And I’m no-ot!”

    Bernie rolled his eyes frantically at Ann. “I see. Hang on, Miff. –Bloody Derry. Chucked her out,” he explained. “Not sure why, but making the bed too hot was definitely in there somewhere.”

    “Eh?” she croaked.

    “Literally,” he said with a sigh. “I think there might be a trailer going begging, Miff.”

    “Nuh-no, ’cos Mike gave it to Var-har-harley!”

    “That can’t be right: Varley’s in the mot—”

    “They chucked that nice Doctor man out and gave Varley his cabin,” said Miff, sniffing dolefully.

    They didn’t have a doctor, only a couple of location nurses. “Uh—Oh! The ship’s doctor—I see. Oh, well, the trailers are air conditioned.”

    “Yes, but that was the last one.”

    “Mm. I’ll ring nice Laverne at the pub.”

    “Harriet said all the rooms are taken and Yvonne and Kate and her have to share.”

    “Well, uh, there must be some girls you can bunk in with!” he said desperately. “Um, where are you ringing from, Miff?”

    Miff was ringing from the steps outside the motel office on the Australian mobile phone Derry had made Gareth buy for her because he’d said she was a cretin that was incapable of keeping track of her appointments. And she wasn’t! Be that as it might, Bernie climbed wearily out of bed, on second thoughts, largely about Miff’s gorgeousness, bawling or not, did allow Ann to climb out of bed and belt, or rather necktie herself into her blessed dressing-gown, and staggered over to the motel office.

    Yes, she was there, all right: sitting on the steps in something that was probably also a dressing-gown but bore very little resemblance to Ann’s, holding a bright orange phone. Possibly chosen so as she couldn’t possibly lose it: even in the tropical night with only the dim verandah light on outside the office it sort of projected itself at you.

    “Fluff,” muttered Ann.

    “’Fraid so.”

    “No! Literally!” she said with a choke of laughter, digging him in the ribs.

    “Oh! The garment! That, too.”

    They went up to her and Ann said kindly: “Did he chuck you out without your clothes, Miff?”

    “Yes.”

    “I dare say we can rescue something for you tomorrow morning. The immediate problem is somewhere to sleep,” said Bernie, trying to sound brisk but not unfeeling.

    Miff wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “There isn’t anywhere.”

    “Harry’s got a spare bed in his cabin: he’d have you,” noted Bernie drily, lapsing rather towards the unfeeling side.

    She went very red. “No! I hate him!”

    Oh, God, now what? “What’s he done now?” he asked resignedly.

    “He said that Kenny was a moron, and he isn’t!”

    “Kenny Who?” asked Ann while Bernie was still totting up the possible contenders.

    “Kenny Marshall, of course,” replied Miff simply.

    He was a moron, all right. “Was this apropos of—Scrub that. Why did he say it, Miff?” asked Bernie cautiously.

    “’Cos I wanted to be in a scene, and I didn’t have to wear my new bikini, and all I said was, I didn’t want any lines! And he was really, really mean to me, Bernie, and he said I’d better stay here and be an Aussie mate’s sheila, and I said how could I stay here, I haven’t got a Green Card, and then he said that Kenny could marry me and he’s a moron!”

    “You mean he said something like: ‘Marry that moron Kenny Marshall and you won’t need a Green Card’?” asked Bernie carefully, praying that Ann wouldn’t point out that Green Cards were American, not Australian. Because he had a feeling it might tip him right over the edge.

    “Yes,” she agreed, sniffing juicily. “Have you got a hanky, Ann?”

    Ann groped in her pockets. “Uh—no.”

    “Here,” said Bernie, handing her his. “Well, that was a nasty thing to say, but that’s Harry all over, you must know what he’s like.”

    “Um, actually I think our immigration regulations—Um, sorry,” muttered Ann, subsiding.

    Bernie didn’t catch her eye because he was bloody sure that if he did he’d burst out laughing. “Mm. Um, seriously, Miff, Harry isn’t that bad: he wouldn’t molest you if you used that spare be—”

    “No-oo!” she wailed, bursting into tears. “I huh-huh-hate him! And I hate Derry too-oo!”

    Ann sat down on the steps beside her and put an arm round the fluff. “I see. Did Derry chuck you out because of Kenny?” she said kindly.

    Bernie blinked. By what perverted leap of logic had she reached— Oops! Miff was sniffing and saying juicily: “Yesh. Sort of. Only I never slept with him or anything, Ann!”

    “No, ’course not,” agreed Ann kindly. “What happened?”

    “He said all the extras had faces like ferrets or—or puddings. I think it was some sort of pudding.”

    “Pease pudding?” said Bernie in spite of himself.

    She sniffled. “I think so. Um, not the Chinese ones, he didn’t mean.”

    “It’s the Irish heritage,” said Bernie with a sigh. “Unfortunately the Steve McQueens and the Pierce Brosnans of 19th-century Ireland don’t seem to have been the ones that emigrated to—” Ann was giving him an amazed glare. “Sorry. I can’t help noticing faces.”

    “Just shut up if you can’t say anything helpful! –I see, Miff, and so did you mention Kenny?”

    “Yes,” she agreed with a rending sniff. “All I said was, that if he wanted good-looking extras, why not use Kenny, after all he is Rosie’s brother and he could easily pop up for a long weekend, and he blew up at me, Ann! And I never slept with him or anything, and I’m not a little tramp! And I know I slept with Euan before, only that was only once and anyway, he never found out! And Kenny never even ah-ah-asked me!” More tears.

    “He must have noticed something,” objected Bernie. “Obsessive, he is, but the man’s not paranoid.”

    Ann had gulped at the revelation about Euan, but she said gamely: “Leave it, Bernie. So then the horrid old thing threw you out, was that it?”

    “Mm.” She blew her nose. “And I might of said that Baby Bunting was a dear little boy and I wished he was mine, but everybody’s been saying that! I mean, Amaryllis said it and he never blew up at her!”

    Ann swallowed and—Bernie couldn’t quite see why at this particular juncture—was reduced to silence. So he offered quickly: “That got on Derry’s wick, did it, Miff?”

    “Yes,” she agreed glumly. “He said I was harping on it. And maybe I did say that both Rosie’s parents were good-looking people and no wonder their children are so good-looking but so what? And it wasn’t me that said if a person married a person with blue eyes in their family you could have a baby with blue eyes, it was Dot! All I said was I betted Kenny could have blue-eyed buh-huh-habies!”

    It was Bernie’s turn to be reduced to a gulping silence. True, he had always known the girl was next-door to retarded, but really—!

    “Not this evening, I don’t think it was,” said Ann to him in a lowered voice.

    “Huh? Oh: no, but no wonder—”

    “Yes. Ssh.” She gave Miff a bit of a hug. “Why not give Kenny a ring? I think that mobile phone’ll probably call Sydney okay—”

    Wail, wail, she couldn’t do that! For God’s sake, the girl must know she was gorgeous, what would be the reaction of any normal male— Er, no. Scrub that. Not bawling her eyes out like she was. No.

    “Could you phone him, Ann?’ she then asked dolefully.

    “Why not?” said Ann cheerfully, avoiding Bernie’s eye. “Um, well, I don’t know his number—”

    That was all right, ’cos he’d programmed it into her phone: he’d been showing her that they could do that—wasn’t that clever?

    While Bernie was still wondering dazedly whether she meant Kenny Marshal or modern phones, Ann agreed they were, and briskly hit the indicated button. Bernie watched and listened in horrid fascination.

    “Yeah hi, that’d be Kenny Marshall, would it?” she said breezily.

    The phone replied with something rather short.

    “Oh, sorry, I thought The West Wing’d be on by now,” replied Ann arcanely. “Um, this is urgent, actually. This is Ann Kitchener speaking, you won’t remember me, but we did meet at your mum and dad’s that night your mum got pissed and forgot about the roast lamb. –I know: one-pot screamer, my mum’s the same. –Yeah, I could’ve done with a bit of gravy, too,” she agreed, not meeting Bernie’s eye. “No, Rosie’s fine. –Yeah, the baby’s good. –No, John’s okay—nothing to do with them. I’m ringing about Miff, actually.”

    The phone was silent. Bernie had time to wonder if the moron had simply hung up. Then it crackled again and Ann replied: “No, she’s fine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to give you a fright. The thing is, she's had a big row with Derry Dawlish and he's chucked her out of their cabin. –Right: now.”

    The phone quacked at length. At one point Ann agreed fervently: “I’ll say he is!” But apart from that she just listened. Then she said: “Yeah, that sounds like a real good plan, Kenny. Nah, stuff Qantas, take Virgin Blue! Right: change at Brizzie. …Um, well, yeah, I could get her down that far, but I don’t think she’s in a fit state to change planes by herself. –Oh, weren’t ya? Oh, good! –Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll sort it out. Ya wanna speak to her? –Okay.” And she held out the phone to Miff. “It’s okay, he’ll come up as far as Brisbane and fetch you, and he wants to speak to you.”

    “Ta ever so, Ann,” she said smiling tearfully. “Hullo?” she said in a tiny voice into the phone. “It’s me. –Um, yes. ’Course you do.”

    Bernie watched and listened in frank fascination. “Ooh!” he gasped, as something connected bodily with his side and hauled at his arm. “Mm,” he recognised, allowing Ann to drag him away from the immediate vicinity. “That sounds all right.”

    “Of course.” She grinned at him. “Well, a bloke doesn’t program his number into a sheila’s mobile for nothing, ya know!”

    “Er—not even to demonstrate his macho prowess with the thing?” he asked humbly.

    “No,” she said succinctly.

    “I see. Um, Ann, I’m afraid if you really intend getting her down to the airport to catch a flight to Brisbane you’ll be on your own: much though I’d like to help, there’s no way—”

    “No, ’course you can’t. That’s all right: it’ll be a change from sitting round under the sun-umbrellas making up crap about how the stars love tropical Queensland!” she said cheerfully.

    “Yes. Well, apart from young Darryn Hinds’ sunburn when he tried that snorkelling stuff, and setting aside the entire topic of that monumental sulk Keel appears to be in—make that sulk crossed with giving blitheringly silly telly interviews in the teeth of Derry’s veto—apart from that, they do appear to be enjoying themselves as much as is humanly possible when working for Derry.”

    “Yeah. And the food’s good. But it’s a bit sameish for those of us that aren’t continually redesigning tropical hideaways and consulting the blokes about filters and things,” said Ann kindly.

    “Of course! Uh—think you can manage it?”

    “Yeah, sure,” she said comfortably. She eyed the now smiling Miff warily. “Talking of Keel—”

    “Mm? Oh. Well, it was a while back: he was breaking up with Katie Herlihy.”

    “Yes, but under Derry Dawlish’s nose?” she hissed.

    “One of them has a death-wish, but the consensus is, it’s not Miff.”

    “Uh—yeah. Poor guy. I think he’s taken Dot’s defection quite badly, Bernie.”

    “Mm. My spies tell me he wouldn’t when she wanted to. And then it dawned on her that every word Rosie had said about the man’s incessant rôle-playing—and I gather there were quite a few words—was true. –Well, didn’t you think all that simple Scottish lad stuff was slightly overdone?”

    “No,” admitted Ann glumly.

    “Oh. Well, you’ve never been exposed to him, Derry and Harry holding forth in one of London’s most expensive and exclusive restaurants. The sort of place where you and the owner-chef call one another by your first names and although you’re only a party of half a dozen you have to book the entire joint—it being only big enough for a party of a dozen at most, in any case—and the special wines for the do are selected in advance and woe betide anyone who asks for a menu.”—Ann was looking at him in horror.—“The food may have been good but I can’t say I noticed: I spent the entire meal wishing heartily I was elsewhere. Take it for all in all, it was one of the horridest evenings of my life!” he ended with a laugh.

    “Oh,” said Ann in limp relief, sagging.

    “But Euan gave every appearance of thoroughly enjoying it—no, of wallowing in it—and it can’t all have been faked, because he was the only one at the table to spot what nauseating substance the chef had added to one of the sauces. –I forget what,” he admitted, as Ann was looking at him enquiringly. “He was right, however, and they all duly kow-towed to him.”

    After a moment Ann asked thoughtfully: “Were there any ladies at it?”

    “Good question. Had Derry known any with the palate to appreciate the food, there would have been, but he didn’t, so there weren’t.”

    “I see,” she said limply. “I know he never takes his wife to anything, but what about his sister?”

    “‘Palate of a warthog,’” quoted Bernie cheerfully.

    “Right. Goddit.”

    Miff was ringing off, all smiles, when the door of the motel office opened and Isabelle Bell said cautiously: “Is everything okay?”

    After that it was all over bar the shouting. Miff slept on the Bells’ sofa-bed that night, and bright and early next morning Isabelle collected all her stuff from Dawlish’s cabin, loaded her and Ann competently into the 4WD, and drove them to the airport. She had let Ann make the actual booking but she’d got her the number and stood over her while she did it. As there were almost no facilities at the little airport it was just as well Isabelle had packed an esky full of chilled sandwiches and fruit juices—yes.

    The little plane duly arrived and Miff with her posh carry-on bag and a plastic shopping bag full of pineapples for assorted Marshall relations from Isabelle got on it, smiling and waving like anything, and it took off.

    “I suppose he will meet her, will he?” said Ann limply.

    Even the forceful Isabelle Bell didn’t say if he didn’t wasn’t the girl capable of getting herself onto the Sydney plane, for goodness’ sake? She merely returned: “If he said he will, he will. He is quite reliable. I’ve warned her the plane might be late getting in from Sydney—it’s Qantas, he couldn’t get onto Virgin Blue at such short notice, they were fully booked.”

    “Right. Well, we’ve done all we can!” concluded Ann with a smile.

    “Yeah. She’ll be okay, Kenny’s a dill but he’s not all bad,” she said comfortably.

    And that seemed to be that. Limply Ann piled back into the 4WD and agreed that yeah, it would be sensible to do a bit of shopping at the supermarkets, since they were here. And duly let Isabelle drag her round both the little town’s supermarkets at top speed. Never in her life had she seen such efficient shopping. What was more, she had a list and she stuck to it.

    Exactly why Ann was included in the expedition—except that Miff had seemed to cling to her—was a mystery: Isabelle obviously hadn’t needed her for anything. However, on the journey back to the motel her motives for seeking company did become a little clearer because she suddenly said: “I suppose Mr Dawlish’ll be wild.”

    “Uh—yeah. Well, he was wild anyway, Isabelle,” Ann reminded her kindly.

    “Mm.” Her chin firmed. “Oh, well, who cares?” she said defiantly.

    From which Ann Kitchener had to conclude that the Grate Director had even the indomitable Mrs Bell cowed. Cripes.