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.
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