Visiting Firemen

PART V

SHOOTING

18

Visiting Firemen

    Ann staggered out to the kitchen, yawning horribly, God her head felt— “Christ!”

    “Hullo,” replied Bernie mildly, closing the fridge.

    To her knowledge—not that that could possibly be called reliable, with her head thumping like a pile-driver—they had not dunnit, last night. “Where the fuck did you spring from?”

    “Your divan.”

    “Eh?”

    “The divan in the sitting-room,” he said patiently.

    “Oh, the spare bed? It’s pretended to be a couch so long that I’d forgotten it’s really a bed. What did you call it? –Never mind. Was it as uncomfortable as it is to sit on?”

    “Pretty much. How’s the head?”

    “Awful. What did I drink last night?”

    “I don’t think it’s entirely a question of what, Ann. More like how much.”

    “Very bloody funny,” she replied evilly.

    “Well, if you want a post-mortem, you let Jerry Marshall start you off with an Australian sherry, then went on to margaritas, which you seemed to find strong but palatable—by my count you had six of those, though I admit I don’t know how much of the foul-looking substance in the glass was actual alcohol—then red wine with dinner,”—Ann winced—“followed by brandy, more brandy and a special after-dinner drink out of a special bottle that Michael Manfred had brought along as a present for his host and hostess.”

    “So I didn’t imagine that cravat,” she said blurrily, turning the tap on hard and— On second thoughts, not drinking Sydney water, no. She staggered over to the fridge. Thank Christ!

    Bernie watched unemotionally as she drank off three quarters of a large bottle of Évian. “Manfred seldom appears in public without a cravat.”

    “Shut up,” she groaned.

    “Why don’t you go back to bed? You won’t be fit to report on exciting high-jinks on set this morning.”

    “Isn’t it Saturday?” she croaked blurrily.

    “No, that wasn’t a Friday night booze-up, Ann,” he said kindly.

    “We often have ’em after work. Some people call ’em happ’ hour,” she said, peering at him. Possibly he might look solider if she closed one eye… Oops! “Only ours usually go on for several hours, ’specially if they’ve had a row with the wife or the hubby or jus’ don’ give a fuck—like that. Or drunk so much they forget they’ve even got one.”

    “Yes, yes, British happy hours are just the same,” he said soothingly. “But that wasn’t one.”

    “No, I wouldn’t’ve gone boozing, not even at happy hour, with Michael Manfred in a cravat. Rupy Maynarde was in an Aran-knit jumper, wasn’t he?” she said plaintively.

    “Yes.”

    “Oh, good: I thought I might’ve imagined it. Well, not so much imagined… Extrapolated,” said Ann thoughtfully, looking thoughtfully at her water bottle.

    “Yes. Take that bottle and go back to bed,” said Bernie clearly.

    “I think I said I’d meet Tony, uh, somewhere.”

    “When he phones I’ll tell him you’re under the weather.”

    “But I’m not. Hangovers don’t count, Downun—Sorry. No, I do have to go to work.”

    “Mm. Can you get a coffee down you without throwing it up, though?”

    “I’m not sick, I’ve just got a splitting headache!” she said irritably.

    “And, presumably, the constitution of an ox. I’d be spewing my heart out if I’d drunk that mixture you put away last night.”

    Ann sat down heavily at the small Fifties tubular-legged table that had cost her megabucks at one of the trendy recycled-junk places. At one point she’d had a mad notion of doing up the entire kitchen to match, hah, hah. “What? Oh. What are you doing here, anyway?”

    “I thought I’d better make my intentions clear, but you weren’t in a fit state to listen, last night,” said Bernie calmly, sitting down opposite her.

    “I’m not in a fit state to listen now,” she sighed.

    “I can see that. Can I get you some aspirin, or something?’

    “In the bathroom cabinet. Panadol,” she sighed.

    Obligingly Bernie fetched them. Since she didn’t immediately chuck them up he then made her a cup of coffee—she only had instant, in fact she didn’t seem to have a coffee-pot—and she didn’t chuck that up, either. Well—constitution of an ox, yes. She then had a shower and eventually came into the sitting-room to report that she didn’t feel better but she felt cleaner.

    “Mm. Well, you’ll have the treat of watching Derry scream at Rosie, Michael and Euan doing some of the interior Singapore scenes today. Or at Dot and Euan, if he gets as far as doing scenes with walking in them.”

    “Uh—thought he was doing the Singapore bits in Queensland?” she groped.

    “Only the scenes on Adam’s verandah and the outdoor scenes. Well, not the outdoor scenes in the street, that’s Set 15. You know, the bit he filmed last week, where—not the bit where Euan and Adam have the big fight under the verandahs and in the square, those are Location Sets 1 and 2, we’re building them in Queensland because he wants the quality of the light— No, the bit immediately after the fight, where Adam dashes round the corner and hops into a rickshaw and away. It’s also the setting for Lily Rose’s, the Stepmother’s and the Stepdaughter’s shopping expedition—introducing Lily Rose to ethnic Singapore, right?”

    “No, but don’t bother to clarify it, thanks. I do remember Adam hopping into a rickshaw, yes. Those legs in tropical whites would be hard to forget. Um, well, what interior scenes are they doing today?”

    “Daddy Captain’s bungalow—not Adam’s hideaway, since Adam isn’t here.”

    “Uh—right. Um, who did you say was gonna be Stepmother, again?”

    “Amaryllis Nuttall,” he said patiently. “She takes the same rôle in the TV series. Looks fifty, must be sixtyish, pixie-like features, excellent bone-structure, blonde?”

    “Oh, good grief, yes. But she’s English,” said Ann dazedly.

    “Quite. She’ll feature in the outdoor wedding in Big Rock Bay—right?”

    “Uh—yeah. Think so. Did they have outdoor weddings in the Fifties, even in Singapore?”

    “I very much doubt it, Ann,” said Bernie sedately, “but Derry is concerned to avoid any possible reference to the wedding scenes in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire.”

    “I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up,” she sighed. “Well, you want a lift to the studios in my heap? If you want to change, we could stop off at your hotel.”

    “You can leave me there, I’m not going near Derry today: I intend to refresh my memories of exactly what I designed for Location Sets 1 and 2. –So as to be prepared when the screaming starts,” he explained.

    “Uh-huh. When’ll that be?”

    “As soon as he lays eyes on them.”

    “Of course.”

    Bernie eyed her uncertainly. “Uh—once my memory’s refreshed, if he isn’t up to anything too frightful I’ll have to pop up and see that the chaps are putting everything up as per orders. Well, it has been worked out very carefully in advance, and we’ve got our own location manager, Geoff Green, in charge—and at least there won’t be a language problem this time, thank Christ—but once the screaming starts, I need to be very sure of my ground.”

    “Um, yes,” said Ann in a small voice.

    “Then I’ll come back,” said Bernie with a little smile.

    “Um, will you? Yes. Um, well, he did try to make them paint that wall a different colour the other day.”

    “Exactly. It took us something like three days’ solid work to match it exactly to the real wall in Gibraltar, that we’ve already got in the can, and which, incidentally, he’s already used in the back projections for those walking scenes he had Euan, Michael, Rupy, Darryn and Dot do—she was in a pink cotton frock and they were in winter uniform, remember?—but that’s Derry all over.”

    “Something about the lighting being all wrong,” said Ann with a smile.

    “That was his excuse at the precise instant, yes. –I’ll go up on Friday.”

    “Mm.”

    He took a deep breath. “I was working up to saying, come up and spend the weekend with me.”

    Ann swallowed hard. “Um, okay. Thanks.”

    “Good,” said Bernie shakily. “Uh—well, Derry won’t stop filming for the small matter of an Australian weekend, but, um, well, you are entitled to a weekend off, aren’t you?”

    Gee, who cared? “Sure! Tony might want to roll up to the studios with his camera, that’ll be enough for Jim, anyway. Uh—no, think he might be playing footy this weekend, or was it going to the footy? Both, come to think of it. Oh, well, too bad. Um, where are we actually headed for?” she added with belated caution.

    “Big Rock Bay. The motel owners have got some cabins up as promised. We could stay there or in the local pub, Geoff says the rooms there are quite nice.”

    “Um, right. Well, I only meant, should I bring my bathers?” said Ann somewhat lamely.

    “There is water, but I can’t guarantee the weather!” replied Bernie with a laugh.

    “Right. Uh—so this Big Rock Bay’s the real place, is it? Is it a secret?”

    “What? Oh!” Bernie’s face fell ludicrously. “Oh, shit. Yes, it is, actually, Ann. Oh, God: I suppose that’s a scoop for you, isn’t it?”

    “I know noth-thing,” Ann assured him. “Well, heck, it’ll be all the same in a hundred years!”

    “Yes,” he said limply. His brain began to thaw and he added weakly: “Besides, if you let it out now the place’ll be inundated with Press while we’re filming, so that’d be your exclusive down the drain, wouldn’t it?”

    “Eh?” replied Ann vaguely. Could she make the time to nip into David Jones and buy a really slick bathing-suit? Ugh, and have a wax job. “What? Oh! Yeah, that’s right. I could tell Jim that, if he…” Should she make it a bikini? Or were they all thongs, these days?

    “It is all right, is it?” said Bernie anxiously.

    “Huh? Oh! ’Course it is! I was just wondering, are we gonna change planes in Brizzie?”

    “Bri—Brisbane? Um, I think so,” he said limply. “Why?”

    “’Cos there might be a nice airport boutique where I could buy a new cozzie,” said Ann happily.

    Bernie’s face was all smiles. Never mind that the details of the vernacular were unfamiliar: he had, slow though he was, completely got the point. “I’m sure there will be, and if all else fails we could drive into the city, go shopping there, and take a limo all the rest of the way. At Derry’s expense,” he explained nicely.

    “I’d be up for that!” agreed Ann happily. “Hey, I gotta warn you,” she warned as she collected her keys, and on second thoughts grabbed her raincoat and scarf, it was still winter and they were still in Sydney: “it may rain all the time we’re up there, though.”

    “I think,” said Bernie, automatically watching to see that her front door latch caught, “that I can cope with that.”

    “Good,” said Ann simply, grinning.

    “This is agony,” admitted Bernie on the Friday as the plane circled above Brisbane airport.

    “Qantas,” explained Ann. “Should of tried Virgin Blue, instead.”

    “What? Oh! Not the plane, or the snacks. Sitting next to you for hours, unable to do anything.”

    “Eh? Oh!” Ann had gone very red. “Yes, um, well, it was you that insisted on burying yourself in work for two solid days and nights.”

    “Had to get it done,” he explained glumly.

    “Yeah,” she agreed mildly.

    “Isn’t it agony for you?” he muttered in her ear.

    Ann swallowed hard. “Pretty much, yes.”

    “Look, could we go to a motel?”

    “Thought we were?”

    “Uh—not up there. Here. There must be motels near the airport, surely?”

    “Dunno. I’d think so. Um, look, realistically, if we do, when are we gonna make it to You-Know-What Bay?”

    “Oh. Damn.”

    That put it real well. Ann cleared her throat. “Not that I don’t want to.”

    “Good!” he said with a laugh, taking her hand and squeezing it rather hard.

    “You could keep doing that: I hate landing,” said Ann.

    Bernie kept doing that.

    “Is this right?” she muttered, sending up a prayer of thanks that they’d had the sense to have lunch after the little plane from Brizzie had decanted them somewhere, as Bernie had put it, east of Suez. Not Cairns, no, the place hadn't been swarming with Asian tourists, high-rise hotels and incredibly expensive golf courses. Smaller than that. The limo had turned out to be from somewhere else, but it had been faithfully waiting for them at the airport, so Ann hadn't asked why they hadn't landed somewhere else in the first place. Since then thousands of K of Queensland rainforest had fled by its tinted windows.

    “It looks… Well, this is the same limo service we used last time,” responded Bernie feebly.

    “Shit, they won’t’ve kept records!” She leaned forward. “’Scuse me, mate, are you sure this is the way to Big Rock Bay?”

    He was sure.

    Ann sat back, shrugging.

    Thousands more K of rainforest had fled by, mixed with what looked like thousands of K of banana plantation, and Ann was about to tell Bernie this must be wrong, when the driver announced on a vindicated note: “The Big Rock Bay Pub—see?”

    That was certainly what it said on a giant shiny board above its verandah, yeah. Gee, was that fresh paint on the verandah posts? Cripes, and a pot-plant sitting by the door? Uh, actually it was a pineapple top, on closer inspection, but it was in a pot.

    “Ring any bells?” she said to Bernie, perceiving too late that he was peering up at the place incredulously.

    “None whatsoever. The general outline is familiar, but that seems to be the generic Australian pub design.”

    “Yeah—well, outback pub design: yeah.”

    “This is it!” said the driver, starting to sound real narked. “The Big Rock Bay Pub!”

    Ann looked fixedly at the artefact sitting in the dust by the verandah steps. “Is that the Big Rock, then?”

    “N—Well, possibly meant to recall it. No, the rock’s out in the bay. They’ve done it up in our honour, thank Christ Derry didn’t decide to use it!” said Bernie fervently.

    “Right. Goddit. Ya wanna try it, or go on down to the Bay?’

    He looked at his watch. “Hell. I’m really sorry, Ann, but we’d better get straight down to the Bay.”

    “Sure. Can I have a comfort stop first, though?”

    “Oh, Hell, yes!”

    Ann leant forward. “I’ll just go to the toilet, mate. You might as well go, too, if you wannoo, and why not grab a beer? Is it always this humid?”

    He brightened. “This isn’t humid!”

    Cripes, wasn’t it? She was soaking.

    “Hey, I can put the air-con on, if ya like,” he offered kindly.

    “Um, yeah; thanks, mate,” said Ann limply, not looking at Bernie. “That’d be great.”

    She tottered into the pub.

    Gee, it really was a genuine outback pub, they didn’t tell her the Ladies’ was for pub patrons only, there were no notices stating this, and the signs actually said “Ladies” and “Gents”, with no blue neon top-hats or pink neon bonnets in sight. True, the person behind the bar was not a raw-boned, un-made-up, cotton-frocked country identity, nor yet a burly fellow in a black singlet, chest hair and a five-day growth: no, she was a smart matron with permed, layered and tinted auburn curls and the latest in shoe-string-strapped pink silk cocktail wear, but very possibly that was for the film people’s benefit. Or, given this was the 21st century and there was a GIANT TV up in one corner of the bar, possibly not: possibly it was merely the global village.

    They hadn't gone so far as to completely do up the Ladies’, the porcelain was original, well, circa 1975, it was pale pink and not in fact porcelain at all, some sort of plastic substance, but the non-toning pink walls were freshly painted and that silver-speckled, white-topped vanity unit was pure 21st-century, or at least, circa 1999, on sale at a bathroom supplies place in Cairns, but yeah, they’d made a real effort. There was even a little pile of neatly folded pink guest towels as well as the paper towels in a dispenser, and a saucer of pale pink guest soaps, and, not every country pub-keeper woulda thought of this one to impress the film people, a really nice brand of liquid soap. Not public toilet liquid soap, no, no: in a real plastic bottle with a picture of carnations on it and one of those strange tap-shaped pumps that you pushed to make the soap drip out. A real one—quite. Mmm, it smelled of carnation, too! She used it gratefully, respectfully leaving the folded guest towels in their original state, and using the hot air thing to dry off. Shoving the giant on-button with her elbow, not her fist, gratitude was one thing but hygiene went hand-in-hand with avoidance of tropic tummy, didn’t it?

    Bernie and the driver were leaning companionably on the bar when she went back out but given the time the drive had taken, not to mention the ambient temperature, never mind if they didn’t call it humid in these parts, she wasn’t surprised. She could really have fancied a lemon, lime and bitters, back in Sydney some of the pubs did it by hand, but most of them had the bottled stuff, it was just as nice, but up here…

    “Would you like a nice spring water, dear?” said the lady behind the bar kindly.

    Limply Ann accepted a nice spring water with a slice of lime in it. Well, yeah, they grew the things up around here, in fact they were reputed to grow like weeds, but heretofore she had been under the impression they were all exported for the trendy set with the peculiar sunnies that spent all their waking hours sitting under the trendy umbrellas of the trendiest cafés smoking the cancer-sticks that were gonna kill them by the time they were fort— “Huh?”

    “I said,” said Bernie in a very lowered voice, “is that all right?”

    “Lovely,” said Ann weakly. “Um, it’s just that I thought the Queensland lime crop usually got exported to New South Wales.”

    Bernie had gone very red. “Exported?” he echoed faintly.

    “Y—”

    “That’s right, dear!” said the lady behind the counter brightly. “It took a while to break into the market, but the Wongs and the Robinsons export all their limes to New South Wales, these days. But I asked Kieran Wong to hold back some specially!”

    “I see,” said Bernie limply. “You did say Wong, did you?”

    “Yes; Kieran runs the place, now, it got too much for his Dad, and Bryce and Linda weren’t interested, he’s into macadamias now.”

    “Yuh—Um, they are a Chinese family, are they?” he croaked.

    “That’s right, dear!”

    Bernie sagged. Derry was desperate for Chinese extras, he had even gone so far as to say that they were going to have to hire some Chinese actors in Sydney, fly them up, and pay them bloody Equity rates for standing round saying NOTHING! “I see. Um, look, Mrs—”

    “Mrs Collins, dear. Call me Laverne, everyone does!”

    “Laverne,” said Bernie very weakly, trying to smile and not to do mental arithmetic based upon the putative dates of the Australian broadcasting of long-forgotten American comedy series. “I’m Bernie—Bernie Anderson—I’m with the film company that’s setting up down at the Bay.”

    “Of course!” she agreed.

    “Yes, um, do you think the Wongs might be interested in being extras in the film?”

    Laverne not only was sure they’d love to, she leapt upon the phone and fervently invited one, Sharon, to be in it immediately.

    “Um, thanks, Laverne. The director won’t be up here for a week or so, but it’d be great if we had a few people, uh, lined up,” he croaked, accepting a note of the Wongs’ phone number.

    “Wasn’t that all right?” asked Ann cautiously, as they and the driver, now revealed as Kev, got back into the limo and—blessed relief!—Kev put the air-con on.

    Bernie leaned back in his seat, sighing. “Mm?”

    “Lining up these Wongs to be extras: wasn’t that all right?”

    “Oh! Uh—” He lowered his voice. “Only if they really are Chinese. Derry’s desperate for Chinese extras.”

    “They’ve gotta be,” said Ann, very puzzled. “Wong’s a Chinese name.”

    “Uh—yes, but Kieran? Sharon? Bryce?”

    “Think Bryce might’ve moved away, Bernie: don’t think the macadamia orchards are out here on the coast.”

    “What? No! The names!” he hissed.

    “Uh—Oh!” Ann eyed him tolerantly, the raving Pommy nit that he was. “Anderson, I have two words to say to you.”

    Bernie swallowed, in spite of himself. “What?”

    “Bruce, Lee,” said Ann very slowly.

    After a dazed moment Bernie collapsed in helpless splutters.

    “They all have English names, even the ones that have real Chinese names as well, don’t youse Poms know nothing?”

    Bernie blew his nose. “No, mate,” he admitted weakly.

    Hours and hours and hours had passed. Ann had given up entirely on standing about in the Queensland humidity like a spare part and had let Isabelle Bell show her into a dinkified little motel cabin in which Australian Federation mingled horribly with Singapore bamboo—er, well, actually Philippines cane, if these here were the same as what The Cane Shop two blocks down from her Sydney flat sold, and they looked the same to her. And had gone out like a light on the bamboo-patterned cotton bedspread in the blessed air-con.

    “Hullo,” she said groggily, rousing to find Bernie looking down at her dubiously.

    “Oh, you’re awake,” he replied in some relief.

    She sat up, yawning. “More or less. Finished?”

    “Yes. Well, it’s dark out,” he admitted.

    “Yeah. How are the sets?”

    “Not as far on as I’d hoped. Well, the verandahs are looking good: it’s an interior courtyard: verandahs on all four sides, kind of thing, but I’ve persuaded Derry to have three sides built, instead of having a vast movable set built to film one conversation between Euan and Adam. But they’re having trouble with the square, I rather thought Derry had bitten off more than he could chew, there. No, well, all things are possible, but a really realistic Colonial square is a big job—banks, churches, courthouses,” he explained drily. “And His Majesty’s budget hasn’t allocated us the dough. Or the time, something on that scale should be a three months’ job.”

    “Help, what’ll you do?”

   “I’ll do what I was told to do, to the best of my ability and with the materials, time and budget allotted me,” replied Bernie drily. “I’ve no idea what Derry’ll do, except throw a temper tantrum, and between you and me, I don’t care. But my best bet’d be, scrub the one very minor scene he was planning for that set and cut straight from Adam’s row with Euan to Adam nipping into his rickshaw.”

    “Thought you said he’d already filmed that?”

    “Yeah.” Bernie yawned suddenly. “I might have a shower.”

    “Do that.”

    He went over to the door of the ensuite and hesitated. “It seems very cold in here, Ann.”

    “Air-con. Mrs Bell assured me it’s the sort that takes the humidity out. Not water-cooled. That switch there.” He was looking at it helplessly. “Turn it to the left.”

    Bernie turned it to the left and the freezing gale above his head subsided. “Is there an off-switch?” he asked cautiously.

    “Ya wanna be soaking wet without benefit of the shower? Then, no.”

    He went very red and went into the ensuite without saying anything.

    “Oops,” muttered Ann to herself, grimacing.

    It wasn’t until she was at the stage of muttering: “How long do Pommy showers take?” that she realised she hadn’t yet had a shower herself. Uh—well, she seemed to have dried out, what with Mrs Bell’s air-con, but no, it wasn’t nice, your first night with a bloke in a fake Singapore motel room, not to have a shower. Limply she undressed and got into her dressing-gown. Well, the lady in David Jones had assured her it was more of a housecoat, really, but very feminine. Ann now felt strongly it was mistake, though true, it wasn’t pink see-through nylon or frilled. It was blue, sort of satin-look stuff, hellishly slippery and the belt, she now discovered, did not do a very good job either of tying—will you get knotted, you stupid piece of consumerist garbage!—or of holding the damned thing shut. Blast!

    “What’s up?” said Bernie mildly from behind her.

    Ann screamed and leapt.

    “Sorry,” he croaked.

    “Uh—yeah. Took me by surprise: thought your toe musta got stuck in the plug-hole in there. Uh—was I muttering? It’s this ruddy dressing-gown. It looked good in the shop.”

    “It looks good now,” he said mildly.

    Ann felt herself go red like a goop. “Uh—thanks. This slippery stuff is, uh, hellishly slippery, the belt won’t tie properly.”

    “Try knotting it like a necktie.”

    Ann hadn't had to do that since her benighted parents had sent her to the institution of higher learning referred to by Lily Rose Rayne and her cousin as Putrid St Agatha’s Academy for Putrid Young Ladies. No, they hadn't had actual gymslips, not even back in her day, it had been skirts and shirt-like blouses with the ties. They did not look good on lumpy teenage girls and in fact neckties had not been invented for the female chest, what possessed these educationist persons? Feebly she tried knotting the blasted dressing-gown’s belt like a tie. Cripes, it worked! “Hey, thanks,” she said feebly. “Hey, would you say educationist was a word?”

    “No. Go and have your shower,” said Bernie, suddenly grinning as it dawned that she was almost as nervous she was. “Want a drink before beddy-byes?”

    “Um, yeah,” said Ann in a strangled voice, disappearing precipitately into the ensuite. The door closed after her. “RUM AND COKE!” she bellowed.

    “Rum and Coke it is,” agreed Bernie mildly, not bothering to raise his voice. He went over to the fridge, smiling. What was the betting they wouldn’t have— Beg your pardon. Good grief! Did they make the stuff here? Uh—Oh, ye gods! They did! Bernie collapsed onto the edge of the bed clutching the quart bottle of Bundaberg rum, laughing himself silly.

    “I was really nervous,” confessed Ann, lying back against Bernie’s chest and gazing blissfully at the currently motionless ceiling fan.

    “Me, too!” he admitted with a laugh.

    “Were you? It didn’t show. –I’m really out of practice,” she confessed.

    “Me, too,” admitted Bernie.

    “Really? What with all the globe-trotting you do?”

    “Uh—wall-to-wall bird isn’t lined up for me all over the world, Ann. Besides, there are a few considerations such as germs, on the one hand, and do I want a one-night-stand at my age on the other, and… Well.”

    “Mm,” agreed Ann vaguely, smiling at the ceiling fan. “It was really good.”

    “Thanks!” said Bernie with a laugh, kissing the tip of her nose. “I’m afraid it was rather quick. Result of not having had it for bit and nerves.”

    “Mm… You remembered I was here, though.” She looked round at him, rather red, but smiling.

    Bernie’s ears rang—yes, literally. He only just stopped himself from croaking “What?” Good God, what sort of local hoons had she been doing it with? “Uh—yes, a gent does notice the lady he’s taken to bed, Ann.”

    “Then I don’t think I’ve ever met a gent before,” said Ann, lying back and smiling at the ceiling fan again.

    “Germaine, where are you now?” said Bernie rather loudly.

    “Eh?”

    “Women’s Lib,” he said grimly.

    “Oh. Don’t think she’d be into threesomes, would she?” she said, squinting at him.

    “Never mind,” he said, squeezing her a bit. “What was that, that you called the rum and Coke, earlier? Not when you asked for it, later on.”

    “Later on was a bit blurred!” said Ann with a chuckle. “Well, I dunno. Bundy and Coke?”

    “That was it. –I see, because it’s Bundaberg rum: you’ve had it before!”

    “Mate,” said Ann weakly, “when I asked you for a rum and Coke, I was being polite because you’re a poor benighted Pom, geddit?”

    “No.”

    “It is a Bundy and Coke out here! A Bundy and Coke is what it is! Try going into any pub and asking for a rum and Coke: they’ll correct you to ‘a Bundy and Coke, mate?’”

    “I’m warning you, Ann, if you say ‘mate’ once more today, I shall scream.”

    Ann squinted at him. “Eh?”

    “I was afraid I was going to have hysterics when you kept calling the unfortunate limo driver that!” he explained with a laugh.

    She took a deep breath.

    “As bad as Harry,” he explained.

    “No!” she shouted.

    “What?” said Bernie feebly.

    Ann sat up and thrust her hands through her hair. “Jesus, it never dawned, did it?”

    “What?” he said feebly.

    “Ya call a bloke mate when ya don’t know his name and ya don’t wanna come the lady passenger!”

    Bernie stared at her.

    “YES!” she shouted.

    “I—I’m terribly sorry, Ann,” he croaked. “I had hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely. I— Should I have called him mate, too?” he asked weakly.

    “No, you’re a Pom!” she said impatiently.

    “I see. Um, but if I was an Australian passenger who didn’t know his name?”

    “Well, you wouldn’t call him ‘my good man’, that’s for sure! Yes, ‘mate’! Jesus, Bernie!”

    Bernie sat up slowly. “I—I was completely convinced you were taking the Mick, the entire trip.”

    “Well, I wasn’t.” Ann took a look at his face. “Well, don’t let it get to ya,” she said limply.

    “No, I— How many other misconceptions have I been labouring under, for God’s sake?”

    Ann got out of bed. “I guess we won’t know that until they crop up, will we?” she said mildly. “Is it too late to order something to eat?”

    Bernie looked at his watch. “I don’t think so!”

    She picked up the motel’s brochure from the dressing-table. “But it says here Room Service is only available until nine-thirty.”

    “It’s eight o’clock!” said Bernie, grinning.

    “It only felt like ten glorious hours, then!” she said with a laugh. “Um… crumbs, they don’t do much. Hamburger? Steak and chips? Steak, egg and chips?”

    “I have read Nevil Shute,” replied Bernie grimly. “Pull the other.”

    Raising her eyebrows slightly, Ann brought the brochure over to him.

    He gulped.

    “Misconception number two,” she said calmly.

    “Oh, God! I give up!” he cried wildly. “Choose for me!”

    “Well, it’s your stomach,” she replied dubiously. “Um… The ham and pineapple sounds good. Ham and pineapple with chips, how does that grab ya?”

    Bernie took a deep breath, didn’t mention cholesterol, didn’t ask whether the ham would be a slice of pig or tiny crumbs pressed together and injected with saline solution, didn’t ask whether the pineapple would come ready-crumbed or out of a tin, and didn’t point out that the chips would be reconstituted pre-cooked potato fuzz, not slices of root vegetable. “Great.”

    Smiling happily, Ann picked up the phone and dialled. “Yeah hi, Mrs Bell, it’s Ann Kitchener. Ya right, it would be! Yeah, righto: Isabelle. Hey, can we order ham and pineapple with chips for two? Great. Thanks. –Um, dunno; hang on, I’ll ask him. –Hey, Bernie, ya want coffee?”

    Bernie thought that was a question that expected the answer “Yes,” so he provided it.

    “Yeah, thanks, Isabelle, two coffees. Um, are you sure? That sounds really good! –Hey, Bernie, Isabelle says there’s some cheesecake left over from their tea, and we can have it with ice cream, for pud!”

    “Mm, lovely,” he murmured.

    “Yeah, thanks, Isabelle, we will. Hey, I was gonna ask you: ya do know there was a whole bottle of Bundy in our fridge, do ya? –Oh—right. Yeah, I’ll tell him. See ya!” And she hung up.

    Bernie won that bet with himself that her next words would be “Hey, Bernie.”

    “Hey, Bernie, Isabelle reckons that bottle of Bundy’s on the house! Not from them, it’s from the pub! And we can keep the bottle!”

    “In that case, you’d better have another,” he murmured.

    “I will!” she beamed, belting on the dressing-gown fiercely.

    “That’s spoilt the view.”

    “Eh? Oh! Thanks,” she said, grinning at him. “Gee, this is good, eh?”

    Bernie didn’t ask whether this was a compliment, because he rather thought it was a reference to free Bundy. Oh, forget it! She was happy. “Super-good,” he agreed.

    “Want one? There’s loads of Coke!”

    Of course there was loads of Coke: if the pub had provided free rum then all the Australian visitors would of course feel it incumbent on them to drink Bundys and Coke—was that the plural? It sounded very odd—and so the motel would be able to sell ten times as much Coke as normal at the usual vastly inflated motel-fridge prices! “I’d love one,” he agreed.

    Beaming, Ann poured them.

    “This is the life!” she sighed, sitting up in bed drinking free Australian rum and extortionately dear motel-fridge Coke, that she’d laden with ice before he’d spotted what she was doing—God, and how long had those ice-cubes been sitting in that fridge?

    Bernie put his arm round her. “I’ll drink to that!” Heroically he drank.

    Back at the coal-face, Ann explained politely: “I have to get your impressions of Sydney, Mr Keel.” –PDQ, actually, it was already Tuesday and Jim was expecting this copy for Wednesday’s edition.

    “I thought we’d agreed you were going to call me Euan?” he replied with a lovely smile.

    “Yeah,” she agreed weakly. Boy, he was something, close to! Well, barring that booze-up with roast lamb at Mrs Marshall’s, where she hadn't seen much of him, what with the booze, this was the nearest she’d got to him. True, she wouldn’t have put him in the same class as Adam McIntyre—what human being could be? Well, on a scale from 1 to 10 of male gorgeousness, not to be confused with mere looks, Sean Connery was a 15. No male in the entire universe came close. But Adam McIntyre was a 14, yep. This close, with that slightly lopsided, curly-mouthed look—Ann knew what she meant—not to mention those thick brown curls that were not a strand-by-strand job, you could tell by looking hard at the place where they rose just above that wide forehead— What with all that, not to mention a few other points that the delirious white uniform was showing off quite well, on the whole—quite well—Euan Keel was definitely a 12 point 5.

    “It’s been raining,” pointed out Rosie detachedly, peeling a mandarine. “Wanna bit?” Generously she passed out bits to Ann, Dot and Euan. “He hasn’t seen Sydney.”

    “I think your harbour’s lovely,” said Euan with a charming smile.

    “She’d’ve written that anyway,” noted Dot, two seconds before Ann could. “Are these off Aunty May’s tree, Rosie?”

    “Nah, she razed that with the rest when they built the new wing,” explained Rosie, producing another mandarine from the crumpled paper bag that clashed curiously with the full skirted, princess-length, strapless and very boned bright blue dress. Dot was in its clone, except that she’d prudently covered hers with a pink and fawn smock borrowed from one of the make-up girls.

    “Oh, ’courshe,” agreed Dot through her mandarine pieces.

   “Theshe’re off Joslynne’s Mum’s tree,” explained Rosie, swallowing. “Oh—sorry, Ann,” she said with her lovely smile—why weren’t Ann’s teeth that small, white and even? “Mum and Dad’s neighbours.”

    “Ya met Joslynne,” Dot reminded her.

    “This is a leg-pull, isn’t it?” murmured Euan, letting Rosie—lucky girl—pop another couple of mandarine segments into his mouth. Gee, why hadn’t she, Ann, thought of bringing in a crumpled bag of mandarines, they were real cheap in the shops at the moment. Well, as cheap as they ever got.

    “No! She did! At Aunty May’s place, last week!” Dot reminded him impatiently.

    “I know. Not that. Do people really grow citrus fruit in their gardens, here?”

    “I just said!” said Rosie impatiently. “Mum razed the tree, along with the rest of them, call it the ritual sacrifice to the ruddy new wing if ya like—”

    “Yes. I’m sorry, Rosie, I thought it was a leg-pull.”

    The cousins stared at him with identical expressions of impatient exasperation and at this point Ann Kitchener broke down in helpless sniggers. Finally gasping: “Britain—must—colder—’n I thought! Ow! Help!”

    “Oh,” said Rosie limply. “Goddit. Yeah, it is, ’specially in our neck of the woods.”

    “You’re on the south coast,” noted Dot dazedly.

    “Yeah, but’s it’s still ruddy brass monkeys from about October to—well, realistically speaking, October. –No,” she allowed over Ann’s further splutters: “it does start to warm up around June, and then, just as you think you’re gonna have a summer—”

    “We—geddit!” gasped Ann helplessly. “Don’—hammer it—bludgeon!”

    “Scotland must be even colder,” finished Rosie with the utmost composure.

    At this point Dot, who was rather flushed, some of them had assumed that was the inevitable result of having Euan Keel sit real close to ya at a small plastic-topped studio caff table, said gruffly to the stranger in their midst: “Sorry.”

    “Uh—yeah. Sorry, Euan,” said Ann limply, wiping her eyes. “It’s just that coming on top of Bernie’s total misconceptions about the vernacular use of the word ‘mate’—”

    “Ma God, you don’t mean Harry’s got it right?” he croaked.

    Ann sat up straight and blew her nose hard. “No, I don’t!” she said with vigour. “And to make it perfectly clear, most people here that have backyards have a lemon tree and probably a mandarine—the things grow like weeds. Oh, and loads of them have tamarillo—What?” she said, as Rosie gave an anguished cry.

    “Ann, I’ve been trying to avoid that subject with the whole of Great Britain for the last four years!”

    Ann shrank into herself. “Sorry, sorry,” she muttered.

    Euan was beginning with a lovely but puzzled smile: “I don’t think I know tama—” But Rosie shouted: “And I’m not gonna be the one to give you the explanation!” so he shut up.

    “Anyway,” she said, producing another mandarine, “–this’d be simpler if I just handed the bag round, eh?—anyway, most Brits think only Clementines are mandies.”

    “Eh?” said Ann limply. Only-Clementines were bloody dear, more like it.

    “Yes! What would you of said this was?” she demanded of Euan, holding one up in his face.

    He blinked, and recoiled. “E-er, a small orange,” he said, smiling uneasily, poor bugger.

    “Exactly!” she said triumphantly. Crikey, thought Ann numbly. Never mind the pretty, round-faced looks and the famous rosebud mouth, nor that she was five foot two in her stockinged feet or, as at the moment, in large, fuzzy pink sheepskin slippers, one of which had been cut open and tied over the cast with a piece of crêpe bandage: it would take something about as strong-minded as a senior Royal Navy captain to stand up to that: did the woman realise how strong she came on? No wonder poor bloody Euan had just blenched. Ann of course had not heretofore been this close but she had seen enough of him to realise that Strong-Minded was not his middle name. Quite intelligent—yes. And quite widely read, he could chat about quite a bit more than just making movies and the fucking British theatre, the latter being, Ann had now had more than time to discover, the most boring topic in the universe barring all sports. But strong-minded? No.

    Dot was now very red indeed. “Shut up, Rosie.”

    “All right, you give him the Solanaceae speech, Dot.”

    “No! I said, shut up!” she cried, redder than ever.

    Ann stared at them with a segment of ordinary mandie, not Clementine, halfway to the gob. Was she imagining those undercurrents?

    “I see: you done that, too? Allee same like Lisbon lemons, would that of been?” said Rosie, extra-airy.

    “Yes! And SHUT UP!” she shouted furiously.

    –Nope, Ann wasn’t imagining anything. “These are mandarines, out here, Euan,” she said quickly.

    He’d been staring at the cousins with that perfect, slightly curly mouth half open like a moron. “Uh—aye,” he said numbly. “Aye, of course, Ann!” Lovely smile, avoiding looking at the cousins. “I’d like to see this garden of Joslynne’s Mum’s!”

    Rosie was now looking extra-smug, so whatever it had been, it hadn't been a cousinly row, as such. Though there was no doubt it had been meant to provoke some sort of reaction from Dot. “Yeah, well, she has fits of exotic gardening, I’m not denying that, but the basic orchard stock’s pretty standard for our climate,” she said mildly.

    “So tell me,” he said with the lovely smile.

    Ann cleared her throat desperately. “Could you possibly tell him after I’ve got a few words out of him, Rosie? ’Cos if I don’t get this copy in by”—she looked at her watch and winced—“half an hour ago, Jim’s gonna kill me. Very slowly. By hand.”

    “Yeah. Sorry, Ann.” She delved into the paper bag again. –Paper bag? Where in God's name had that come from, this was the 21st century! “Have a mandie.”

    “Thanks,” said Ann weakly. About the size of a golf ball, ooh, quite a well-grown one! “Yeah, um, well, I dunno, Euan. Have you seen anything of Sydney?”

    “I’m afraid not,” he said nicely.

    “Oh. Um, Dot took Rupy for a ride on the Manly ferry,” she said sadly. “He was able to give me some telling little titbits about that.”

    “Eh?” croaked Dot, looking up from carefully peeling a mandarine. Those perfect little ears were still red, mind you.

    “Sure. Jim printed them in the little para under the pic that nobody ever reads ’cos they’re busy trying to tell if it’s a hairpiece.”

    “I see,” said Euan, trying not to laugh—or possibly not to scream, his face was starting to look glazed. “I’m afraid I haven’t been on any ferry, Ann.”

    “Oh. Harbour Bridge?”

    “E-er… I’ve seen pictures of it, of course.”

    Right. “Opera House?”

    “No. Gareth suggested I might like to come and look at some rocks, but Derry screamed something about my image, so I didn’t go,” he said with a little grimace and a deprecating shrug.

    “That woulda been The Rocks, I think: what’s wrong with—Oh. That’s the PA guy: gay, right?”

    “Mm. We could have gone in a group but nevertheless Derry remained—I was going to say adamant,” he said drily, “but the word ‘empurpled’ would put it better.”

    “Uh—yeah. I’d better not let that creep in,” admitted Ann regretfully. “Okay, I’ll just have to write the usual blah.”

    “He’s been to several, um, wouldja call them discos?” offered Dot.

    “Dunno, Dot, I never go to that kind of place,” said Ann cheerfully. “Clubs?”

    “Ye-ah… Well, my friend Isabelle, her old flatmates, Carla and Glenda, I mean, that she was flatting with before she got married, they useda go clubbing, but I don’t think those were the kind of place that Derry’d let Euan go to, acksherly.”

    Carefully Ann wrote “Astrayan as she is spoke,” managing to almost Pitmanize ‘spoke’ but falling back on longhand for the rest. “Huh? Oh—no, right.”

    “Or that he would want to go to, Dot!” added Euan, sounding quite huffy, ooh, that was interesting. Ann wrote “huffy?”

    “No,” agreed Dot. “Well, Rosie said you went to lots of glitzy clubs that time you and her were in Paris for Chrissie. So I thought clubs might be your scene, only not the sort that Carla and Glenda used to go to. Or maybe those Paris ones were night-clubs?” She ran down and stuffed a whole mandie, admittedly quite a small one, into her gob.

    For some reason Euan was now crinkling up the eyes and tangling the eyelashes like anything. “Clubs are definitely not my scene, wee Dot!” he said gaily. “Derry ordered me to do the PR thing while I was in Paris for Chrissie, so I did.”

    “It was pretty boring,” said Rosie calmly.

    Possibly he didn’t take this as the slur on his manhood that Ann felt it could be taken as—that was, if them going to Paris together meant what it normally did in this part of Federation Space—because he agreed mildly: “Aye, call them clubs or night-clubs, they’re all the same.” He watched with interest as Dot carefully ejected one, two, three, four, five—gosh, six!—help, seven, eight—phew! Eight pips into her hand.

    “That was a pippy one,” she admitted.

    “Yeah, maybe my first strategy of handing round bits of each one was better after all. Not that it was a strategy, think I was copying Mum,” said Rose thoughtfully. “Well, that okay, Ann? ‘Euan Keel Impressed by Sydney Night-Life Scene’? Uh, your paper wanna give the casino a puff, like that?”

    “Don’t think so; depends whether they’re taking out a full-page ad this week, really.”

    “Right. Um, lovely comfortable hotels, very welcoming?” she offered.

    “No, Derry’s still pissed off because the hotel didn’t reserve their conference rooms and ballroom for him on the off-chance he might decide to use one,” objected Euan.

    “Right. Think that’s as good as it’s gonna get, Ann,” admitted Rosie cheerfully. “Unless you wanna haul him out to The Burbs,”—she leered horribly at her; Ann recoiled—“and get Tony to snap him standing by the Gridley-Smythes’ tamarillo tree: ‘Euan Keel Fascinated by Exotic Sydney Backyards’?”

    Before Ann could admit that was an idea, it was too late for tomorrow’s edition but they could run in on Saturday, Euan said cheerfully: “Och, that was really feeble, Rosie! “Tammy Euan’s New Pash’; or ‘Euan Dumps Clementine’ or ‘Tammy Forever, Says Euan’—depending on the number of inches available, of course.”

    “‘Mandie Forever, question mark’, ya Scotch nit,” returned Rosie, sticking out her tongue at him.

    “Too subtle, darling!” he choked. “Come on, wee Dot!”

    Dot held up a small mandarine. “‘Confucius say, No Clementine for Keel, Sydney Mandie Easier to Peel’.”

    Even though it would have taken up far too many inches of Jim’s sacred column space, Ann collapsed in helpless hysterics, barely able to gasp: “I geddit! It’s a game—you all—play!”

    “Yeah. Well, me and Rupy, originally,” admitted Rosie.

    Ann mopped her eyes. “Where is he?”

    “Sound Stage 4, smothered in Max Factor, sweltering in his winter uniform on a piece of cardboard battleship, being screamed at by D.D.—whaddelse?” returned Derry Dawlish’s new female discovery calmly.

    Dubiously Ann eyed their mounds of sequinned blue nylon net—there was more than one shade in there, mind you—and Euan’s whites, but said nothing.

    “Derry’s filming a very Naval bit,” explained Euan kindly. “He’s got poor John in there giving him Naval advice that he’s ignoring.”

    Ann goggled at poor John’s wife, hand suspended with a segment of mandie halfway to the gob. “Not really? He’s not doing official Naval advisor, is he, Rosie? You know, like in the credits, um, forget the wording, not grateful thanks to the Royal Navy, but, um, something where they put all those letters after their names.”

    “R.N., D.S.C., M.U.G.,” agreed Captain Haworth’s wife. “Nope, don’t think the Royal Navy—and kindly don’t quote me—likes its serving officers to take on holiday jobs, Ann.”

    Ann gulped, and tried to smile.

    “You know, Ann,” said Dot kindly: “usually in the credits it’s like ‘R.N., bracket capital R, small T, small D, fullstop, close bracket, D.S.C., M.U.G.’—like that.”

    “Bracket Ar Tee—Oh! Goddit! Right, fullstop an’ all. Think it is, yeah.”

    “It bloody well is for the Naval ones,” admitted Rosie with a slight shudder.

    “Ye-ah.” Ann eyed her cautiously. “Nevertheless he’s doing it?”

    “Oh, sure!” she agreed breezily.

    Right. Blast, that would’ve made a nice little para, they could’ve run a lovely pic from the archives, she was almost sure she remembered one from when Lily Rose Rayne married her Real Captain: in his uniform with all the medal ribb— “Huh? Oh, thanks, Rosie,” she said limply, accepting some more segments of mandie.

    “Last one.” Rosie eyed Dot thoughtfully. “Unless anyone’d like a treeter?”

    Dot went very red but didn’t speak.

    Insouciantly Rosie delved in the now very, very crumpled paper bag and produced one. Ooh, a lovely deep red one! Ann didn’t know why, but she’d had the idea that Joslynne’s Mum’s tree might have been the apricot-coloured sort, they were tasteless and generally lacking in Va-room and, in, short, failed to put hair on your chest.

    “What is it?” asked Euan, blinking at it.

    Rosie held it up by its stalk. –This didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t ripe, mind you. Of course, if they were overripe they could be slightly sicky, while at the same time still putting hair on your chest and stripping the fur off your tongue. “Youse’d call it a tamarillo, Euan.”

    “Och, I wouldna! I’ve never laid eyes on such a thing in ma life!”

    –Dot was still very flushed, incidentally: this was interesting. Well, it’d be more interesting if Ann could figure out what the fuck the reference was—but, yeah. Interesting.

    “No, well, most of Mum’s generation still think of them as tree-tomatoes,” explained Rosie.

    “So do I, actually,” admitted Ann. “Mind you, both the supermarkets near me seem to have stopped stocking them—haven’t seen any this year.”

    “Have you got a greengrocer’s?” returned Rosie clinically.

    “No, the second supermarket drove them out of business about six years back.”

    “Shit, have it, Ann,” she said generously, handing it over. “They’re dropping off the trees, even Joslynne’s Mum’s sick of making her special tamarillo salad, so-called. It’s really nice, actually, you slice them and serve them with plain yoghurt and chopped tarragon: it’s not a pudding, see, you have it with meat.”

    Dot was redder than ever, but the recipe seemed—well, revolting, yeah—but apart from that perfectly harmless, so what—

    “Haven’t I heard that recipe before? Or is it the result of listening to five hundred versions of Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, each one getting further and further away from the original in the mistaken belief the performer was giving the thing a jazz touch?” said a hugely up-market male Pommy voice at this juncture. No, not Bernie, even more up-market, in fact about as up-market as John Haworth himself but unfortunately it wasn’t him, either, it was David Whatsisname, the composer.

    And gee, Dot growled very, very sourly: “Yeah, prolly. So what?” So that solved that puzzle, didn’t it? Only how could she possibly have met him before? He was a gazetted Pom, and his dad was a famous conductor, wasn’t he?—and Dot was a kid from the Sydney suburbs that had only got into flaming St Agatha’s on a scholarship.

    He sat down, uninvited, and picked up the treeter before Ann could scream “That’s mine! She give it to ME!” And said in that bloody supercilious drawl of his: “Related to the deadly nightshade?”

    “This is Australia, we’ve never heard of the deadly nightshade, David, it’s a myth of the North, and that’s Ann’s: give it back to her,” responded Rosie instantly. Gee, good on her! So maybe she didn’t like him? Or maybe he’d tried looking down that nose of his at her—Big Mistake, Big, Ann felt happily. Huge. Rosie Haworth, stand for the sort of shit types like D. Walsingham dished out? No—way.

    “Help! Sorry, Ann!” he gasped, handing it over quickly.

    “Yeah, very funny. She did give it to me, actually,” said Ann, hurriedly putting it in her handbag.

    “In a handbag?” he said deeply.

    “That’s Pommy, too,” noted Rosie in a very bored voice.

    “That reminds me, Rosie,” said Ann happily, “where did you get that very, very rare paper bag?”

    For answer Rosie held it up. On it were printed the words: “Mushroom Bag” and a picture of a mushroom. In probably environmental unfriendly red ink, but you couldn’t have everything. Yep, that proved it was a mushroom bag, all right.

    Kindly she explained: “Joslynne’s Mum is a lapsed vegetarian, she buys a lot of mushrooms, and she recycles the bags.”

    “Thanks, Rosie!”

    “Don’t mensh. Any other little mysteries I can clear up for ya, Ann?” she returned graciously.

    “Yes, actually. If Mr Dawlish is filming Rupy and assorted winter naval uniforms, why are you two in floods of blue nylon net and why is Euan in whites?”

    “I can’t explain the whites, but me and Dot are in these abortions because we were ordered to be—eh, Dot?”—Dot nodded feelingly.—“Yeah.”

    “I’m in whites because I was ordered to be,” explained Euan meekly.

    “Right,” agreed Ann foggily.

    “These are the outfits for the Sisters number,” David explained kindly.

    “Eh?” she groped.

    “I don’t know that I can explain,” he admitted, “but as far as my poor grasp of Derry’s intentions goes,”—gee, he must of gone to a good school, Ann didn’t know anybody else, including Jim’s editorial pencil, that would of said “goes” there instead of “go”—“round about the time the Daughter and the Stepdaughter get together in Singapore, the 21st-century Daughter is watching her stage alter ego”—wot?—“performing the Sisters number in the bingo hall,”—yeah, big joke—“ in floods of blue nylon net.”

    “I can’t dance!” said Dot in alarm, so that musta sorta made sense to someone.

    “No, she can’t, and in that case, where’s Gray?” demanded Rosie.

    “I’m sorry,” said David nicely: “that’s the sum total of my knowledge of the matter. Unless you want an eyewitness account of the rows that have already gone on over the tempo?”

    The others were hurriedly disclaiming all interest. “I wouldn’t mind,” admitted Ann wistfully. “It might brighten up Saturday’s edition, it’s looking distinctly sparse at the moment.”

    “I don’t mind posing in Joslynne’s Mum’s back yard,” Euan assured her nicely.

    “Thanks, Euan. Actually I might have to take you up on that. Um, well, can ya have rows over tempo when your leading dancer’s in a wheelchair, David?”

    “Derry can, yes,” he said succinctly.

    Right. Dubiously Ann wrote “Sisters. Tempo.” “Um, right, tempo; um, sorry, David, but what is the Sisters number?”

    Alas, at this confession of reportorial ignorance Rosie and Dot collapsed in helpless sniggers, followed in very short order by Euan. So that left Smarty-Pants Walsingham sitting there looking like a real nit, didn’t it? Heh, heh.

    “It’s from White Christmas,” explained Rosie kindly, blowing her nose. “Boy, that did me good! What a pity D.D. isn’t here! White Christmas, Ann,” she repeated.

    Ann wrote “White Christmas,” managing the “White” in Pitman’s but then giving up and putting “Xmas.” Then conceding: “My supermarket—the one I usually go to, it has special offers on the bread more often than the other one—plays that around Chrissie time. I don’t see where these sisters come into it, though; wasn’t that Bing Crosby?”

    “She really has never seen it!” cried Euan, collapsing in further ecstatic sniggers. “So much for Derry’s great movie icons of the 20th century crap! Ann, I love you!” he gasped.

    “Um, thanks.”

    Eagerly they explained that it was a really sentimental old movie—uh-huh, yeah, Ann wrote very large in clear “ARCHIVES”—with Rosemary Clooney and another lady, and Bing and another guy—“Danny KAYE, Euan, whaddareya?” shouted Rosie at this point—okay, Danny Kaye (did he sing?)—and this old general, see? (No, but it didn’t matter: Ann was pretty sure they didn’t see, either.) And they were sisters, concluded Euan. Not the point, they did a sisters number, Euan! (Okay, goddit, they did a sisters number: Ann wrote “No.” Uh—with giant blue fans? Okay, she wrote “bl. fans”.) Rosie then explained how in the long ago her mum used to inflict a smudgy video of this epic on the kids at Chrissie time while they were digesting the turkey and pud in the spare room with the speckledy television set and the adults were in the lounge-room knocking back the frosties and generally sleeping it off. Ann was familiar with that syndrome, she didn’t bother to write any of that down. And her brother Kenny would get up and do his groaner act when Bing’s big number came on! Dot agreed it was quite funny, actually it was mainly what she remembered about that video, only nobody tell Derry. Everybody agreed eagerly that they wouldn’t tell Derry. Opinion seemed to be divided about whether it really was a musical but they all agreed there were several song-and-dance numbers.

    Rosie then explained grimly that in the film she was supposed to do the number, with the blue fans, yes, with Gray Hunter, in drag. That was, he was in drag, he took the Rosemary Clooney rôle. Ann had never heard of him but she wasn’t too sure she wasn’t supposed to have, so she checked the spelling and wrote his name down very carefully. And where was he? ended Rosie angrily.

    “Rosie, darling, you’re incapacitated: presumably Derry’s decided to save on the plane tickets and film the dancing back at Henny Penny’s studios,” said Euan edgily.

    She took a deep breath. “He PROMISED Gray could come out here! I’ll KILL the wanker!”

    “I think,” said David very lightly, “that Dot may be holding your coat as you do it.”

    “Why?” demanded Dot instantly.

    “Uh—well, don’t shoot me, I’m merely the pianist.”—Wot? Somebody got it, because Rosie immediately shouted bitterly: “Very FUNNY, David! Spit it out, will ya?” So possibly it had been aimed at her in the first place?—“From what Derry said while he was shouting about tempos, it seems that he envisages Dot dancing it.”

    “What? Balls! It’s a duet!” cried Dawlish’s leading lady.

    “Yeah. And I can’t dance,” repeated Dot doggedly.

    David cleared his throat. “No, uh, Dot dancing it with Euan.”

    “Gee, David, he can’t dance either,” noted Rosie snidely.

    Ann had a coughing fit but it was all right, Euan was grinning and admitting: “That’s right, a wee bit of ballroom shuffling is my level. Or sticking the leg out and gliding in ma Buttons suit!”

    “Mm. Well, I think ballroom shuffling is what’s envisaged,” said David on a wry note. “Possibly in the context of Singapore nights—it got very muddled.”

    “In the ballroom of the Raffles Hotel?” asked Rosie sharply.

    “I don’t know,” said the composer simply.

    “It is a very nice set,” admitted Ann, “and so far it seem to be going to waste.”

    “Well, he’s filmed me and Adam sitting on a sofa flirting in it,” said Rosie detachedly. “I think that was the afternoon you were out with Tony and Michael on a photo op near a sub.”

    “Wearing that?” asked Ann keenly.

    “No, a different abortion, though also with layers of net.”

    Ann shrugged.

    “Um, possibly,” added David dubiously, “it’s a reprise.”

    Rosie took a deep breath. “Look, David, if you knew that all along and this whole thing was a wind-up—”

    “No!” he cried, possibly genuine, who could tell? Ann Kitchener certainly couldn’t and from the look on his face the well known Euan Keel couldn’t, either. Gee, and what was more he didn’t like him, well, that was interesting. “I couldn’t work out what the fuck he was on about, and I was concentrating on not having the tempos mucked about with!”

    “Smacks of verisimilitude,” noted Dot sourly.

    “It’s true,” he said tightly.

    “Drop it, David, I’m the one that sat and watched ya tell Aunty Kate her trifle with the Aussie sherry in it was delicious,” she said in a bored voice. Gee, that was interesting! Was she? Had she? When was this?

    Ann watched limply as the composer got up, looking thoroughly narked, said sourly: “Just don’t say you haven’t been warned,” and walked out.

    After quite some time Rosie said grimly: “I am not doing that number with anyone but Gray: it’s in my contract.”

    “Yeah, um, that’d be the singing, wouldn’t it?” replied her cousin uneasily.

    “The whole BIT!” she shouted.

    “Well, yeah; I mean you sing and wave the fans about at the same time, don’t you? Um, that won’t stop him having a reprise of it in the Raffles Hotel ballroom with ballroom dancing,” said Dot gloomily. “Um, I think Rupy did say there were going to be lots of um, reprises.” –Poor little soul obviously couldn’t think of another word for them. Ann watched her sympathetically: she couldn’t, either.

    After a bit Rosie said grudgingly: “All right, so long as Gray does the actual number. But he was looking forward to coming out here, he’s never been further than a day trip to Boulogne!”

    “Yeah. Um, he’s a friend of Rosie’s from her tap classes, like, he’s not famous or anything,” said Dot awkwardly to Ann.

    “I see.”

    Rosie sighed. “He teaches tap and soft-shoe at Della’s Dance Studio in London, Ann. And I apologise for the shouting.”

    “That’s okay,” said Ann feebly. “I'd better go and write up my piece, Jim’ll be at the steam-coming-out-the ears stage by now.”

    “I'm sorry I couldn't give you anything much, Ann,” said Euan nicely.

    As a matter of fact he had given her considerable food for thought. Considerable. “Heck, that’s okay, Euan, I’ll fudge something up. I suppose there wouldn’t be a pic of you in your Buttons suit, would there?”

    He scratched his chin. “E-er… Definitely not the one I wear in the film, I haven’t even seen it yet. The Henny Penny PR people did take some snaps, I think, when Rosie and I did that number for the show, but I don’t know that they were ever published.”

    “Yeah. In the paper that Aunty June takes: she sent Mum the clipping,” said Rosie heavily. “You looked good and I looked fat. I can ring Mum and she can dash into town with the album, if you like, Ann.”

    “Um, no, thanks all the same: I think there’d be things like clearing the copyright and possibly even paying megabucks, depending on who owns that paper. We’ll run one of those ones Tony took of you, Euan. Um, well, ya got a favourite one?”

    He reckoned he didn’t, nice smile. Well, okay. It wouldn’t be the one of the naval set with the flagpole, though: many rude headlines could be thought up to go with that and there was always the chance that a sub-editor with a dirty mind might actually get away with one. Especially if the copy was very late in, like it was gonna be. Ann glanced at her watch, leapt up, and fled to the little room where they were letting her plug in her laptop. Not neglecting, however, to make sure she had her purse with the precious treeter in it. She might be surrounded by Derry Dawlish’s fabulously talented and almost without exception gorgeous cast, but she wasn’t totally lost to all sense of reality. Yet.

    Very, very, very much later that day she mopped her brow in a sort of sweaty empathy as the great director at last yelled: “CUT! All RIGHT! Get your horrible bodies off my set, and by God, if that lighting isn’t right THIS time, Pat McLintock, you will never work for me again!” And Dot and Euan tottered off the Raffles Hotel ballroom set and collapsed into their folding chairs. Or, actually, Euan had commandeered a large silver-blue brocade Queen Anne armchair that had been declared surplus to requirements and collapsed into that. It still wasn’t clear if this was a reprise or not, but Ann was never gonna forget the tune of Sisters for as long as she lived, that was for sure. Rosie had been released quite some time since, the close-ups having been apparently satisfactory, and had been wheeled off, yawning her head off, by a grim-faced naval husband.

    Various other persons had of course been victimised as well: the two of them weren’t dancing alone in a huge ballroom, though at one stage, possibly the screen was meant to go misty at the edges, there had been a lot of shouting about lenses, they in fact had been. (Lead-in to a dream sequence? Or out of one? Or into the bingo hall bit? Would that technically be a flash forward? Oh, forget it!) So Rupy, now in whites, was able to totter off the ballroom floor, too, and collapse onto the chair beside Ann’s. “Just tell me one thing,” she begged.

    “Mm?”

    “In the film, I mean, when it’s all done, it’ll be the orchestra, won’t it?”

    “You mean those fuckwits, quote unquote, Ann, dear?” he sighed, removing his shoes.

    “No,” said Ann, looking over sympathetically at the cluster of Australian bit-players who’d been pretending to be the Raffles ballroom’s orchestra. “You know they always have background music? This scene’ll have an orchestra playing the bloody Sisters thing, won’t it?”

    “Yes, of course, dear,” he said, massaging the feet. “Ugh, er, ow,” he groaned.

    “Um, then why all the insistence on David playing the piano?” said Ann in a very much lowered voice.

    “Mm? Oh! All that stuff about tempos and that embarrassing screaming-match he and Derry had, in which it was revealed to the world that Derry can’t carry a tune and has as much musicality as David’s left boot?”

    The composer’s very words. Ann smiled weakly. “Yeah.”

    “Well, David has to set the tempo for the background music, you see, dear. I mean, when Euan and Dot circle the ballroom like a pair of gibbons”—to Ann’s right, Euan grinned and Dot scowled—“it has to look as if they really are dancing to a real tune.” He sat back, sighing. “At least for a few seconds,” he conceded. “So David was playing it with the actual tempo he’ll use for the score, dear.”

    “I see,” said Ann limply.

    Rupy twinkled at her. “Yes. Are you going to run that nice shot of me and Dot and Euan posed by the curtain?”

    “Um, well, yeah, if it turns out, why not?”

    Tony had stuck it out to the bitter end, though, true, this could have had something to do with the shouting that had gone on in Jim’s office quite recently about timesheets. He had been tenderly packing his equipment but now he put in: “Of course it’ll turn out!”

    “Yes, well, it’ll make a nice change from endless threesomes of Rosie, Euan and Dot,” admitted Ann.

    “I got a really good one of them with the big blue fans and him between them,” he warned.

    “Saturday. Three-page spread,” said Ann tiredly, “or so—”

    “Ooh, really? Hey, great!”

    “Or so Our Master reckons at the moment. This really good shot’d be regardless of the fact that nowhere in the film do Rosie and Dot appear on screen together, and regardless of the fact that Euan’s not in that song-and-dance number with the fans, would it?”

    “Eh? Well probably, yeah. So what?” said Tony happily.

    So what, indeed. Tiredly Ann hauled herself to her feet and girded up her loins for the long, long argument over why Tony hadn't brought his heap and why her petrol allowance had to be spent on carting him across the vast Sydney greater metropolitan—

    “Oh, hullo,” she said sheepishly. “Thought you’d gone.”

    “No, been checking colour values in the editing room,” replied Bernie arcanely.

    “What of?” croaked Rupy, paling.

    “Not the ballroom, Rupy: that bloody Gibraltar wall.”

    “Oh,” he said, relaxing. “My God, my heart nearly stopped, Bernie! No, well, we had very similar scenes when we were shooting the ballroom scenes for the series. The set that Derry ripped off for this set,” he explained kindly.

    “I know,” said Derry’s Production Designer calmly. “The one with all the blue and the mirrors. We’re having far fewer mirrors, miles more palm trees. The Singapore Colonial look.”

    “Most of the dresses are still blue, though,” murmured Euan.

    “Ours not to reason why. Blue and green against Colonial white was ordained, never mind if the Raffles Hotel ballroom’s never been white in its life!” replied Bernie cheerfully. “Come on, Ann. Need a lift, Tony?”

    That seemed to be that, then. Ann let him lead them off.

    At long last, after a huge tea of bacon and eggs followed by a nice fuck, she was relaxed enough to admit that it had been a really gruesome day, but she had got something in to Jim before noon, and though the interview with Euan was fudged, she had picked up a lot of extra stuff. She’d bought a bottle of Bundy on the strength of that free bottle up at The Big Rock Bay Pub, so they had a drop of that and then she showed him her notepad.

    There was a short silence. Then Bernie said with a laugh in his voice: “Darling, you may believe, in fact I’m sure you do believe, that you got some interesting stuff today, but what you’ve actually written is ‘12.5. Harb luvly,’ spelt L,U,V,L,Y,” he elaborated unnecessarily, “then, on a new line, ‘Astrayan’—is it? Yes: ‘Astrayan as she is,’ squiggle—”

    “Give that here!” Ann grabbed it. “Not squiggle, smoke! Uh—no. Spoke. Spoke!”

    “Uh-huh.” Bernie put his arm round her very tightly and read over her shoulder: “New line: ‘huffy?’ then ‘EK imp by S Night-L Sc,’ that seems clear, uh, bracket, R,T,D—were you prematurely retiring John Haworth, Ann? This next bit’s a recipe, I think, unless it’s in code?” He looked at it thoughtfully: it said: “Slice treeters yog + tgon. w MEAT.”

    “Of course it’s a recipe!” said Ann crossly.

    His shoulders shook. “Of course. This next bit seems obvious: ‘Sisters, tempo. Squiggle Xmas’—got it. Er, ‘no blue fans’? I thought it was very much blue fans, in fact I spent about a week researching the exact shade of blue and getting our unfortunate props people to get hold of mountains of ostrich feathers and dye them the requisite shade.”

    Ann glared. “It isn’t ‘no’! I wouldn’t write N,O, fullstop for ‘no’, ya dickhead!”

    “What is it, then?”

    She peered at it, baffled. “Never mind!”

    “No,” he agreed mildly. “Gray Hunter, that’s clear. But ‘trifle’ and ‘Buttons pic’?”

    Ann glared at the page in a baffled silence. She must of written more than that! “I must of written more than—Oh.” She had turned over to an almost empty sheet on which was written in clear “Ballroom of the Raffels Raffles? Hotel” and, very large, “ARCHIVES”.

    “Mm?” he murmured.

    Ann turned back. “Obvious. If we can a get a pic of Euan as Buttons, we’ll run it.”

    “Mm. Trifle?’

    “Uh…” Desperately she drained her Bundy. “Oh, shit! Sorry, that was yours.”

    “Any time. Trifle?”

    “Don’t keep saying that! Um… Australian sherry… Shut up,” she warned. “Oh! Got it! How come young Dot seems to know bloody David Whatsisface? He’s a famous Pommy composer, for God’s sake!”

    “He lives in Adelaide, next-door to the house that her Aunt Kate used to own,” said Bernie tranquilly. He looked at Ann’s dropped jaw. “Pommy side fifteen, Aussies naff all,” he concluded amiably. “Have another Bundy, Ann.”