Lucky Break

31

Lucky Break

    “I’m asking you now,” said Wal hoarsely, “so as to—to give you a bit of time to think about it.”

    Livia’s heart beat very fast, and she felt as if she was going to choke. She swallowed hard.

    “Well?” he said grimly.

    “I don’t need to think about it,” she said, very faintly.

    “WELL?” he shouted furiously.

    “Of course it’s yes, Wallace,” said Livia in a very small voice, tears starting to her eyes: “how could you think I— Of course it’s yes.”

    Wal had been standing by the big picture window. He came over and sat down beside her on the sofa. “Do you mean it?” he said in a hoarse voice.

    “Yes,” said Livia, sniffing. “Yes,” she added more firmly.

    Wal put his hand over hers and pressed it down hard onto her knee. “I know I’ve got a rotten track record,” he said tightly, not looking at her.

    “Ye-es... But perhaps those ladies wanted... different things,” said Livia, very faintly.

    His lips tightened. “What do you want?” he said harshly, not looking at her.

    “I just want to be with you,” said Livia in a tiny voice.

    “And?” he said grimly.

    There was quite a long silence.

    “If—if you could possibly afford it, Wallace, dear,” said Livia, trying not to let her voice shake but not succeeding, “I would quite like a house with a little garden. But it doesn’t matter, if you’re not keen, darling!” she added hurriedly.

    Wal goggled at her.

    “And—and— Well, perhaps to do a few guest spots, dear—you know. Just in local shows. I quite enjoy television work,” she said faintly.

    “Yeah—well, I’m not asking you to chuck in the acting entirely if you don’t want to,” he said weakly.

    There was another silence—shorter, however.

    “Is that It?” he said in a hard voice.

    Livia’s lips trembled. This wasn’t at all how she’d imagined it might be—though she hadn’t seriously imagined he ever would. Well, ask her to stay out here for a bit, yes, possibly. But not marriage! Finally she managed to say: “Well, there—there is one thing.”

    “Yes?” he said, mouth grim.

    “I—I would quite like a little cat,” faltered Livia.

    Wal’s jaw dropped.

    “Not if you don’t like cats, Wallace, darling!”

    “Of course I— Flaming Norah, is that it?” he said numbly.

    Livia nodded anxiously.

    He ran his hand over his face. “Bloody Leila demanded a pre-nuptial agreement and God knows what! Look, Livia, this is serious, you know!”

    A tear trickled down Livia’s cheek. “I’m not doing it right,” she said.

    Wal put an arm round her. “Of course you— Look, we don’t have community property here, this isn’t California, you know!”

    “No-o... Oh,” said Livia going very red. “I wouldn’t want to get divorced, Wallace, I thought you understood that.”

    Wal flushed darkly. “It’s for keeps, then, is it?”

    Livia nodded, looking at him anxiously.

    Wal enveloped her in a bear hug, not saying anything.

    Eventually she said into his shoulder: “My track record’s even worse than yours, you know!” She gave an airy laugh that failed entirely.

    “Eh?” He sat up. “Bullshit! I’ve been divorced three times!”

    “I didn’t mean—”

    “I know what you meant, and it’s me that made a hash of marriage three times!” he said loudly. “Are you quite sure you wanna take me on?”

    Livia nodded firmly.

    “Good,” he said, sinking back limply against the sofa. “Because this is it, far’s I’m concerned. Never been so worked up in all me puff. –Thought you might laugh in me face.”

    “What?” said Livia dazedly.

    “Well, I know I can afford to give you a decent sort of standard of living, but you’ve got your career. And—uh, well, you’ve more or less seen the cultural delights this dump’s got to offer. Couldn’t blame you for wanting to go back to Pong— sorry, Britain.”

    “My career’s not going anywhere: I was very lucky to get that part in the soap, and it’s the only lucky break I’ve had in the past twenty years,” said Livia frankly. “And to tell you the truth, I’m not very interested in all those cultural things, Wallace, dear.”

    “Uh—no, maybe not. But—well, the big shows—that sort of thing! No high life here, ya know.”

    “I don’t want that. I just want to—to be normal,” said Livia, her lips trembling.

    “Yeah. Well I’m normal, all right. –Don’t bawl, old girl,” he said, putting an arm round her.

    She leaned against his shoulder, and sighed. “I swear you won’t regret it, Wallace!” she said determinedly.

    Wal replied calmly: “Don’t be a nana. Wouldn’t have asked you if I thought I was going to regret it. Seen enough to know what I want when I come across it. I’m just worried you’ll be bored out of your skull.”

    “No. I won’t be. –Oh, dear, Wallace, what about Amy?” she cried.

    His jaw dropped. “Hell. Um—Gawd, I’d do a fair bit for ya, Livia, but don’t ask me to have her live with us!”

    “No,” said Livia with a little smile, “I won’t ask you that. But I brought her out here, and—and we’ve been sharing a flat, and so forth...”

    He scratched his head, grimacing. “Uh—strewth, I dunno… Let her have the flat, and—and write her a glowing reference? She got any super?”

    “What?”

    “Shit, what do the Poms call it?” he muttered. “Pension? You know: superannuation!”

    “Oh. Oh—a pension fund?”

    Wal nodded.

    “No. She has got Aunty Daphne’s insurance money: that’s invested.”

    “Good. Won’t starve, then. Would she wanna stay out here?”

    “Um—well, she does find it very hot... Only this last week it’s been milder, hasn’t it?”

    “Yeah. March is often decent. Then come April it starts to pour and ya get driving rain and howling gales for the next eight months. –No,” he said hurriedly, “not really that bad! Sometimes it’s lovely, right up till May.”

    Livia nodded, looking blank.

    Wal smiled a bit. “Look, if she does want to move out here, I own a block of flats—just four: brick and tile, bought ’em ages ago. Quite a respectable suburb. Could let her have one for a reasonable sort of rent.”

    Livia sighed. “That’s very kind, darling. I will put it to her. I don’t think she has any friends of her own at home, really, and of course now that Mummy and Aunty Daphne are both gone...”

    “Yeah,” he said, patting her knee. “You put it to her.” He got up, groaning a bit, and went over to the bar.

    “Wallace: at this hour?” said Livia faintly.

    “I need a restorative!” he replied frankly. “Anyway, better have a toast, eh?” He poured a decent-sized Cognac for himself and a smaller one for Livia, to which he added some ginger ale, and some ice from the small freezing compartment of the little bar fridqe. “Ya know, these bloody things,” he said, shoving the-door closed with his jandalled foot, “cost more than a flaming kitchen fridge does! Smallest model, I mean.”

    “Really? How absurd, darling!”

    “Yeah. ’S’what the market’ll stand. Retailers get away with murder, out here. Well, wholesalers too, of course. –Cheers!” he said, sitting down beside her and raising his glass.

    “To us,” said Livia shakily, smiling at him.

    He took a gulp of Cognac. “God, I needed that!°

    She put her hand on his bare knee, smiling.

    “Gawd, don’t start that, I’m so flaming shagged out—!”

    “No, I just wanted to touch you,” she said.

    Wal covered her hand with his. “Mm.”

    “Yeah—well, congratulations again, Wal. See ya soon, eh?” said Sir Jacob, very weakly. He hung up with a palsied hand. After quite some time he managed to rise from his sunlounger—he’d taken the call on the patio, it being Sunday morning—and go in search of his wife. His knees, he noted detachedly, had gone kinda wobbly.

    “Really?” she cried. “Oh, wonderful! I’m so glad!”

    Jake had thought that would be pretty much her reaction. Nevertheless he only managed to look at her limply.

    “WHAT?” shouted Mac terribly into the silence which reigned on the flagstones before the empty bleachers after Livia’s shock announcement.

    Livia explained, with an impressive grasp of the vernacular which was wasted on the fuming Mac: “Wal’s caseload is very light at the moment, you see, darling, and his friend has offered us the use of this bach, Mac, darling, and—well, he might not be able to get away later, for a proper honeymoon, so—”

    Mac went into a purple-faced choking fit as it dawned that she really did intend walking off in the middle of the run of the play.

    When the shouting had more or less died down she did literally walk off. Adam, who had managed to congratulate her in between Mac’s shouting and spluttering, hurried after her and took her arm before she could disappear beyond the pink-sided Chemistry Block.

    “So when’s it to be?” he asked, grinning.

    “We thought we’d fit the ceremony in before I have to leave for that telly thing in Australia—well, one can’t one let one’s public down, I suppose!” she fluted happily, apparently unaware that she was letting her public down right now. “Will you still be here, Adam?”

    Adam made a face. “Taking off the day after the show ends I’m afraid, darling. And at that I’ll get barely a fortnight to rehearse. Bad as the old days in rep!” he added with a laugh.

    Livia nodded.

    “Um—look, if you let me know the date as soon as you’ve set it I’ll see if I can get back. After all, how long is the flight from Sydney?”—Livia looked blanker.—“Well, three or four hours, I think,” said Adam. “That’s nothing, I’ll pop over, give you away, and pop back!”

    “Yes, I’d love that,” she said, patting his hand. “Though I don’t think you’d better give me away,” she said, frowning a little.

    “No!” he choked. “Delirious publicity, though, darling!”

    Livia smiled. “Wallace would hate it.”

    “Yes.” Adam halted her in the middle of the deserted drive. “Livia, are you absolutely sure? He is very much the—er—Antipodean macho male, you know.”

    Livia was very pink. “Yes. Very sure.”

    “Good,” said Adam, smiling into her eyes. He pulled her to him and kissed her gently.

    She swallowed loudly.

    “Mm, still there, isn’t it?” he noted with a twinkle. “Be there till the day we die, I shouldn’t wonder!”

    “Yes,” said Livia, licking her lips and determinedly not looking down. “We’ve had some lovely times, Adam, dear. I’ll always remember them.”

    “Me, too,” he said gently, squeezing her hand.

    “Adam,” said Livia timidly, “what about—about you and little Georgy?”

    Adam’s lips tightened. After a moment he said: “I don’t know.”

    “I think she is very fond of you,” she said uncertainly.

    “Mm.”

    “Of course, she is very clever,” said Livia dubiously.

    “Quite.”

    “I didn’t mean—!” she gasped.

    “No, I know you didn’t, darling. Uh—look, Livia, you are absolutely sure about this, are you?”

    “Very sure, darling!” she beamed, nodding. “I must fly, a million things to do!”

    Adam opened his mouth again uncertainly, but Livia had hurried off.

    Georgy blew her nose. “I suppose I’ll have to.”

    “That’s better!” approved Joel, patting her back.

    She sniffed dolefully. “But who’ll prompt?”

    “Anyone!” said Mac recklessly. “Uh—no, I’ll prompt,” he amended hurriedly. “Don’t worry about it, Georgy: you’ll be— Shit.”

    “She will not be shit, whatever else she may be. Gorgeous, delightful, spiffing, even,” said Joel with dignity, handing her his own clean handkerchief, “but not shit.”

    “The costumes,” said Mac lamely.

    Everyone stared hard at Georgy—particularly at her front.

    Georgy experienced a strong desire to cover up the front of her tee-shirt with both hands. She gulped.

    “I’m no expert,” said Joel finally, “but I’d say hers are a damn sight better than La Livia’s.”

    “Um—yeah,” said Mac weakly—he had, after all, known them longer than Joel had. “She’s got a narrow back, but there’s enough in front.”

    Georgy had been red before but she was now a sort of mottled purple.

    “Look, must we?” said Adam loudly.

    Georgy sniffed and put Joel’s hanky absent-mindedly into the pocket of her jeans. “To we ac-tors,” she said impressively, “our bodies are but tools.”

    Everybody choked with the exception of Adam and Stephen, both of whom went red and looked grim.

    “Yeah. Look, bring your tool through here,” decided Mac, producing a tangle of large keys from his hip pocket, “and we’ll try them on. I’m afraid they might all be too short, she’s a bloody midget, ya know.”

    “Never mind: Georgy has delicious ankles,” said Roddy.

    Mac goggled at him.

    “Delicious! Little white dainty ones. Well, whitish: Anty-podean girls are never really the milk-white of yer English rose: had you noticed?”

    “NO!” roared Mac. “And SHUDDUP! You’re here on sufferance!”

    “Barefoot,” said Roddy firmly, ignoring the temper. He’d endured worse. Added to which, he might or might not have been there on sufferance as far as Mac was concerned, but he was certainly there on Derry Dawlish’s payroll.

    “That’s not a bad idea,” conceded Joel.

    “All right,” said Mac through his teeth: “accompany me into the female dressing-room, fairies all, and give me your expert opinion on Georgy’s ankles under Livia’s tarty rags!” Glaring, he strode off towards the female dressing-room.

    … “I can’t,” gulped Georgy, five minutes later.

    Mac wasn’t that surprized. “Don’t want Adam?”

    “Um—”“

    “Right! Adam: out!”—Adam shrugged slightly and went out. Georgy looked after him uncertainly.—“And you, you, and especially YOU,” said Mac, glaring at the hapless Nigel, “ALL OUT!”

    “Even though I’m not a fairy, I thought you might need my expert opinion,” said Nigel aggrievedly.

    “GET OUT!” he roared.

    “I gave up a day’s wages for this,” Nigel whinged.

    “Many of the cast, dear boy, would give up considerably more, I am persuaded, to see Georgy try to insert her fair form into Livia’s fairy frocks,” Joel assured him.

    “Well, yeah!” he grinned.

    “Yes, and GET OUT!” shouted Mac.

    Nigel paused at the door of the big room. “Well, are we going to rehearse some time today, or shall I go back to the garage?”

    “YES!” shouted Mac. “In FIVE MINUTES! GET OUT!”

    Nigel withdrew.

    “Go on, scram,” said Mac grimly to Joel and Roddy.

    “Would it be better or worse for Georgy if we did?” wondered Joel.

    Georgy gulped.

    “Roddy’s artistic: you’ll need his opinion,” Joel added.

    “I can give you half an opinion already,” said Roddy. “For God’s sake don’t put her into that pink one.”

    “Pink’s sometimes all right with red hair,” said Georgy timidly.

    “In the first place, it isn’t red, it’s auburn: or more accurately, mahogany touched with old gold and the merest hint,” said Roddy, narrowing his eyes frightfully, “of burnt Siena; and in the second—”

    “Stay,” groaned Mac, disappearing into Livia’s corner cubbyhole.

    “In the second place, you’d look vile in that pink thing, it’s pinky pink,” finished  Roddy, unperturbed.

    “Righto,” said Georgy meekly.

   Roddy blinked.

    “This is not a prima donna,” explained Joel kindly, taking his elbow.

    “No, so it would seem.” Roddy shook him off and perched on a handy desk, pushing someone’s make-up tray to one side. He began to sketch.

    “Oo-er,” said Joel, peering over his shoulder.

    Roddy shoved him away.

    “I will go, if you like Georgy,” he offered.

    “No, it’s all right, Joel,” she said shyly.

    Mac came in, panting, with armfuls of white tulle and muslin, and grey, black and  white satin. “Think one of these is a bloody petticoat!” he panted.

    “The one that can stand up by itself,” said Roddy, not looking up from his sketchpad.

    “Um—yes, it can, actually, Mac. It’s an underskirt,” said Georgy weakly.

    Mac dumped the dresses on a long table—fortunately clean and empty of the make-up it normally contained when assorted fairies, lizards, elves et al. were being made up. “This?” He stood it up on the floor experimentally. It stood there obediently.

    “Yes,” said Georgy.

    “Yes,” agreed Roddy, glancing up very briefly. “That white fluffy thing goes over it. Without, in your case, five million bloody hundredweight of bloody paper roses!” he said grimly to Georgy.

    “Um—the garlands are hanging up by themselves.”

    “And they can stay there,” said Roddy grimly.

    “Yeah, she’ll look good in white muslin and huge great patches of Velcro,” said Mac acidly, spreading out the white muslin skirt that Lady Carrano had once ironed.

    Roddy slid off his desk. He held out his sketch to Mac. “Those very delicate white things that florists put in bouquets these days. –God, you do have them in New Zealand?”

    “Oh, I know!” cried Georgy. “Not that I’ve ever had a bouquet,” she added innocently. “Yes, we do have them, Roddy. Um—aren’t they alive, though? I mean, they’ll die.” She came to look over his shoulder. “I see: where the Velcro patches are!” she beamed.

    “Gypsophila,” said Joel. “It just came to me,” he explained modestly as Roddy nodded pleasedly and Georgy gaped at him.

    “Delicate,” allowed Mac grudgingly. “All right, that’ll do for Livia’s white scenes. And for the pink ones, before you start. Now, there’s still grey and black,” he announced grimly.

    Roddy sketched rapidly. “Here,” he said, holding it out to Mac. “Grey—well, silver paint on tulle: a much lighter look. Fairy lights in the skirt. Pity you haven’t got a spare set of wings: still, can’t have everything.”

    “Is there a spare set?” Mac demanded of Georgy.

    “There’s some prototypes, I think,” she said dubiously.

    Mac snapped his fingers. “Get hold of—of Whatsisface, Pauline’s offsider.”

    “Greg.”

    “Yes. He can show us what they’ve got and spray some tulle. I want to see the effect today, tomorrow’ll be too late. –Get into the black one,” he ordered Georgy in a steely voice.

    Blushing, she did so.

    There was a horrified silence. Even Mac was reduced to a gulp. In fact, Joel and Roddy noted with a certain glee, he looked sort of greenish. Actually, so did she.

    “Funny,” said Roddy faintly at last, “lots of pale-skinned girls look really great in black. Well, like I said, not yer English ro—”

    “Shuddup,” said Mac tightly.

    “She cannot possibly wear the thing,” stated Roddy.

    Mac replied through his teeth: “She has to, Adam’s in black in that last scene, too, and all the lighting’s set for it.”

    “It’s the satin, I think,” said Roddy dubiously.

    “Or the satin plus the silver—uh—whatsits,” added Joel.

    “Encrustations—yeah. Look, if you’ve designed the scene in black and silver, let her wear grey again, Mac.”

    Mac sighed. “All right. Anything’d be better than that. –Take it off.”

    Georgy nodded but looked down shyly at herself in the black dress.

    Groaning, Mac said: “All right, change in Livia’s cubicle.”

    She grabbed up her tee-shirt and jeans and hurried into the cubicle.

    Adam came back in and, as Roddy was again sketching and Joel was peering over his shoulder, came to peer, too. “Really?” he said with interest. After a few moments Mac gave in and joined them. Roddy sketched busily. Georgy came out of Livia’s cubicle dressed in her tee-shirt and jeans, said in a small voice: “I’ll ring Greg, then,” to no reaction whatsoever, and vanished.

    “That could be interesting,” said Adam at last.

    “A bit obvious, though?” murmured Joel. “Er—could look overdone?”

    “It would depend,” said Adam, frowning thoughtfully, “on how delicately it was handled.”

    “Mm.” Roddy rubbed his nose. “One version has Titania dressed entirely in small petals on a body-stocking.”

    “Rubbish,” said Adam.

    “Or small petals on a body,” said Roddy.

    “Complete with bra and G-string, no doubt? It’ll be just like an Esther Williams movie!” replied Adam with huge cordiality.

    Roddy shrugged helplessly. “It was the great D.D., not me. I’m only the humble instrument.”

    “God, can’t somebody control him?” he muttered.

    Mac noted glumly: “It’s a pity pubic hair is seen as essentially taboo by the English-speaking world. I think it’d be pretty: just a few scattered petals—little ones, of those weeny pansy things: not pansies, I don’t think they are, but smaller; touch of mauve and gold, you see, on the whitish skin, with the hair!”

    “And the nipples,” noted Joel. “Touch of pink.”

    Mac agreed pleasedly: “And the— Very funny,” he said lamely

    “This is Georgy we’re discussing, is it?” said Adam grimly.

    “Essentially—yes,” replied Roddy with super-blandness.

    “Won’t Adam look rather—um—heavy, beside her?” said Joel dubiously.

    Mac had been wondering that. He looked anxiously at Roddy.

    “Yes. But too bad: he’s been pretty much the heavy throughout, hasn’t he?” he said airily.

    Mac opened his mouth to blast him and then thought better of it. He frowned thoughtfully.

    “That’s how Derry sees it, at all events,” said Roddy airily, not looking at Adam. “At least, with a very young Titania. Been going on about dark and light principles and um—earth and air, or something. Read a Maori myth or some such thing that said something of the sort.”

    Adam began: “But I thought—” He broke off.

    “What?” said Roddy blandly.

    “Isn’t the sky or the air or the light principle, whatever you want to call it, the male figure, and the earth mother the female?” said Adam feebly to his uncle.

     Mac replied obscurely: “Rangi and Papa. Yeah.”

    “Maybe I didn’t understand him,” said Roddy blandly. “Anyway, he sees Titania as representing all the light, airy forces, and Oberon the others.”

    “The Dawlish Version,” said Adam sourly.

    “Something like that,” agreed Roddy blandly.

    “What would Oberon wear, though?” asked Joel.

    “Depends on the legs,” said Roddy simply.

    “Huh?”

    “If we can’t get anyone with decent legs, a certain amount of basic re-thinking will have to be done.”

    “Decent legs are a bloody prerequisite for the rôle,” said Mac feebly.

    “Only in our post-Victorian minds,” corrected Roddy. “One could conceive of him as very kingly, in a long robe.”

    “What? Bullshit!” cried Mac.

    “Ermine-trimmed,” said Roddy.

    “Fabulous,” said Adam acidly. “Now tell me how you underline the contrast with Theseus’s bloody court.”

    Roddy conceded: “That could be a problem. Only do we want a contrast?”

    “Only if you don’t want a disaster,” replied Adam acidly.

    “One tends to agree, dear,” agreed Joel.

    “It’s flaming self-evident!” snorted Mac. “There the fairies are, out in the bloody forest, frolicking about on the bloody grass, jabbering about cowslips and crap! What more do ya want?”

    “A big stage direction that says ‘Enter Oberon, scantily clad,’ suggested Joel.

    Roddy shrugged. “Speak to His Highness. Or, alternatively, provide the legs.”

    There was another pause, after which Adam said crossly: “It’s all completely hypothetical, in any case!”

    Nobody replied to this. Mac produced a script and began reading it, making faces to himself. Roddy went back to sketching. Joel volunteered to hang the dresses up again—to which Mac grunted, so he did.

    Adam wandered aimlessly over to a grimy window and stared out at the back wall of some unidentifiable building.

    The great man having vanished at what was now felt to be precisely the wrong moment in search of putative Big Game fish, he had missed Georgy’s first performance.

    “Send him a wire, Charles,” suggested Roddy, yawning. “Er—‘Come back at once, all is forgiven, Livia on hols with boyfriend, Georgy to play Titania this week, Adam visibly weakening in re Oberon, Stop, Charles.’”

    Charles opened his mouth. He closed it again. He grinned sheepishly. “Mm. Couldn’t have put it better meself.”

    “Well, it was marvellous. I mean, her and Adam together! And she was lovely, Charles, you have to admit it,” he said cautiously, as they strolled through the park towards their hotel. Or in a direction which Roddy swore was that of their hotel, though Charles had a feeling it only led to a large Moreton Bay fig.

    “Yes,” he agreed gloomily.

    “Livia’s not due back until Sunday,” Roddy reminded him. “Derry could catch the Saturday show, if he gets back when he said he would. Um—with luck.”

    “True.”

    Roddy swallowed. Nothing had been heard from the great man. “He’s probably met some bird, and they’ve gone off to her—”

    “I’ve worked that out, thank you!” shouted Charles.

    They walked on.

    “Mac suggested tiny mauve and gold petals. I think he meant heartsease. What do you think?” said Roddy.

    Charles sighed.

    “Well?”

    “Given that we’re talking not merely hypothesis, but actual flights of fancy, here, Roddy,” he said heavily—Roddy grinned—“I think that unless you’re bloody careful round about the area of the G-string she’ll look like bloody Esther Williams!”

    Roddy gulped. “Adam said that,” he admitted in a small voice.

    “I’ve never denied he has natural taste,” returned Charles grimly.

    “No, but say we—um, just a little triangular cover-up of petals, no actual strings, what do you think?”

    Charles sighed. “Did you say she was dark auburn?”

    Roddy replied unashamedly: “Looked like it through the knickers, yes. Mac was nearly creaming his jeans, I can tell you.”

    “I don’t wish to know that!” said Charles hurriedly.

    “‘Have a portrait of Queen Victoria,’” replied Roddy politely, gesturing at the park’s stone—or possibly concrete—version of the monarch.

    Charles smiled reluctantly. “This is the wrong way.”

    “No, there’s a lovely Aphrodite at the Waterhole a bit further along.”

    “A bit further along by the Moreton Bay figs.”

    “N— Well, they do form a sort of background, depending on where one stands. But as to your earlier enquiry: yes. Dark auburn. Never known the touch of a dye-brush nor the depilator’s hand.”

    “Or even his wax—quite. Well, given that, I’d say the unadorned Georgy would look forty million times better.”

    Roddy sighed dolefully.

    “But given that we do want this epic to be available to the general public, not to say the eventual video to be available to the schools—which I assure you Double Dee Productions’ management does intend, whatever flights of fancy the individual Derry might be indulging in—yes, a small triangle of the petals,” Charles allowed. “Now explain what you’ll do with the male genitalia to make ’em look even ten percent less grotesque. And before you say ‘little petals too’, let me just add—” He counted under his breath. “Several words of caution,” he ended, not exactly brilliantly.

    “Well, go on. If you must. But let me just add that to the grotesque-minded, all is grotesque!” said Roddy crossly.

    “That bloody photograph of Nijinsky in Spectre de la Rose,” said Charles, not exactly succinctly.

    Roddy shouted angrily: “All right, what the Hell would you do with Adam’s genitals?”

    “Just as well that that Aphrodite can’t hear you,” he noted. “—God, she has got a pot!”

    “Urn.”

    “Very well, a urn,” said Charles smoothly. “I don’t know what I’d do with Adam’s genitals, Roddy, and as a matter of fact I’m not speculating very deeply on the point, because as you may recall,” he said, getting louder: “we—have not—got him!”

    “True,” conceded Roddy glumly.

    “Jesus,” muttered Charles around ten a.m. of the following day, pacing around the suite.

    “Is it possible to fall off one of those deep-sea marlin-killing vessels,” wondered Roddy airily, “and if so, why wasn’t it on the News?”

    “SHUT UP!” he howled.

    Roddy sighed. “Try the motel again.”

    “What good would that do? I’ve left umpteen messages, and I just tried it ten minutes ago!”

    “Um... I know: try Polly Carrano!”

    Charles stared at him. “Why?”

    “Well, he seemed pretty thick with her... Well, even if she gave him the brush-off, he might have rung her or something. Well, it’s better than doing nothing!”

    Charles sighed. He picked up the phone. “Unlisted number,” he reported grimly.

    “Bugger. No, hold on: he must have written it down somewhere!”

    “Yes, in his Filofax. Which is no doubt in his breast pocket as we speak.”

    “Not if he’s wearing the Hemingway designer shirt, surely?” protested Roddy.

    “Shut up,” sighed Charles wearily. “Um... Hang on: if I try Joel—”

    “He is on our side, but is he willing?”

    Charles looked at his watch. “More to the point, will he be awake? Oh, too bad!”

    “Thank God,” he said when Melinda put Joel on. The phone screamed something at him. “Oh—sorry. Er—could you possibly let me have Polly Carrano’s number? What? No! I’m trying to get hold of Derry, and—” He held the receiver away from his ear, wincing, as it screamed something at him. “No! We haven’t, isn’t that self-evident? ...All right, Joel,” he said heavily. “Sorry I shouted. –Yes, I know you’ve got a stake in it, too, it’s why I— Oh, thanks. –Gone to get it,” he reported limply to Roddy.

    ... “Well?” said Roddy some ten minutes later as Charles, after profuse thanks and much scribbling, said goodbye to Polly and hung up.

    Gulping a bit, Charles admitted: “This is all third-hand or something, but according to Polly, Lady Harding reports that Sir John— Hang on, is that right? Yes, that Sir John has picked Derry up on his yacht—I think it must be a fair size, I can’t see Derry— No, sorry. Anyway, picked him up on his yacht and gone off sailing round the Bay of Islands with him.”

    “Oh, goody,” said Roddy acidly.

    “Er—no. The yacht,” said Charles, swallowing, “may be contacted by radio-telephone.”

    Roddy goggled at him.

    “Yes, well, it can’t be small, as I said. Um—well, God knows if the switchboard here— Anyway, here goes nothing,” he said, squaring his shoulders.

    ... “Look, never MIND where you are, Derry!” he shouted. “Come BACK, that’s what I’m saying! .. What? .. Oh, my God! ...What? ...Um—yes, I’ll hold on, if radio-telephonic communications don’t automatically cut out unless one speaks contin— Asking Sir John Harding’s advice,” he said to Roddy.

    “Mm.” Roddy was sketching. He held his head on one side, looking at his work.

    Charles glared at him. “He’s off Land’s END!” he said angrily.

    “So?”

    “Or whatever they call it here,” said Charles sulkily. “It’s the most northerly point, it’s as far away as he can bloody well be without actually sailing to fucking Queensland to look at fucking Moreton Ba— What?” he said hurriedly. “He’ll what? ...Shit, how fast do they— No, it probably— All right, Derry. Yes, very well. Mm. See you soon.”

    “They’re going to winch him up to the executive Lear jet,” predicted Roddy, laying down his sketchpad.

    Charles came and sagged onto the sofa. “Very nearly,” he groaned. “Sir John will put in to the nearest p—not port, settlement, I think was the expression—having radioed ahead for a helicopter to, um, forget. Some Maori name. That’ll take him back to its, um, point of departure, where there’ll be a smallish plane waiting for him. To fly him back here.”

    “Smallish Lear jet.”

    “Um—well, evidently Sir John did say if Jake Carrano wasn’t using the Carrano Group’s— Yes, very funny. Otherwise it’ll be a— Well, one of those small planes Derry sometimes takes to the races, or some such. He’ll be back around lunchtime tomorrow, evidently,” he ended weakly. “It would be possible to drive, but that would take a day, and you’d have to get the car up there in the first pl— Sorry. It ain’t what you know—!”

    “This ranks as unobtrusive, does it?” asked Bill Michaels sardonically as Derry’s head appeared, panting, at the top of the ladder on the electricians’ stand.

    “Shut up!” he panted. “And give me a hand!”

    Bill assisted him to haul himself up. “How were the marlin?” he asked politely.

    “Shut up!” puffed Derry.

    “Marlin forty, Dawlish love,” noted Bill to the sky—or rather, rolled-back tarpaulin.

    Over at the console, the blond Euan sniggered.

    Derry panted for a bit. “I don’t think they’ll have noticed, they’ll still be in the dressing-rooms,” he said at last.

    “Possibly,” allowed Bill. Euan sniggered.

    “Is it always this bloody warm in March?” demanded Derry aggrievedly, mopping his brow.

    “Possibly,” allowed Bill. Euan sniggered again.

    Glaring, Derry demanded: “Well, when is it warm—I mean, clear blue sky and so forth—but not humid?”

    Bill scratched the whiskers. “Er—two days in late November?”

    “All right, I get the point!” he Derry angrily.

    “—Try that,” added Bill to Euan, unmoved.

    Euan moved a knob. “Yeah,” he reported.

    “Good,” said Bill unemotionally.

    Derry sighed. “Can I sit down?”

    “You may, certainly,” replied Bill with terrific courtesy. Euan and the dark-haired boy with him sniggered. So did two other boys, though one of them was shrouded in enormous headphones and the other was reading a book and until this moment both had appeared oblivious of the great director’s presence not to say the conversation.

    “What on?” he said angrily.

    “Um,” Bill scratched the whiskers. “Dunno. We need these chairs.”

    Derry glared.

    The boy who had been reading said helpfully: “You could sit on the edge and dangle your legs over.”

    Before Derry could actually explode Bill said hurriedly: “No, he couldn’t, you clot, he’s too eminent and anyway we don’t want legs dangling over the edge of the stand, as I think I may just have whispered in the shell-likes of five bloody billion of Rabbit’s friends and relations previously.”—The boy merely grinned.—“Nip down and nick a chair from somewhere,” added Bill.

    “Righto.” He got up.

    “Not from the audience, they’re all booked,” added Bill hurriedly.

    The boy paused with one leg down the ladder. “Oh. Um—”

    “Pick a tutorial room,” said Bill with an airy wave of his hand.

    “Righto.” He disappeared.

    “We don’t have any of our tutorials in the Old Block,” Bill explained courteously to Derry.

    The boys sniggered.

    Derry wandered over to Euan and peered over his shoulder. “Christ,” he said in a shaken voice.

    Bill followed him. “Cue for light, cue for sound—”

    “I can see that!” he said in a shaken voice. “Who designed this system?”

    Bill laid a hand on his heart—or at least on his torn black singlet—and bowed.

    “You ought to be a professional,” said Derry weakly.

    Bill goggled at him. “I am a professional!”

    Euan choked.

    “Uh—oh. I see what you mean. Sorry,” said Derry feebly.

    Relenting, Bill said with a grin: “Show ’im the good bits, Euan.”

    Euan looked at him dubiously.

    “Go on, ya nana!” his professor urged.

    Euan turned a switch. A subsidiary screen lit up.

    “Bo Derek?” said Derry weakly.

    Bill squinted. “Could be. –Verify this hypothesis empirically,” he ordered.

    Euan pressed a button and the salient points of the picture enlarged.

    “Definitely. –Proceed,” ordered Bill. “Built in yer actual video machine functions, here,” he explained technically.

    “Yes,” said Derry. “I see,” he  added feebly as a great assortment of mammary glands then flickered past his eyes as Euan fast-forwarded. “Home movies.”

    “Yeah. –Hang on, that was a good bit!” said Bill aggrievedly.

    Euan obediently reversed to the required spot.

    “One of the boys got that off some arty-tarty European fillum he saw on the arty-tarty channel in Oz,” explained Bill as Euan zoomed in on the pubic hair. “Don’t often get it on EnZed Tee-Vee. We’ve cut in a bit of blue movie stuff here and there, too, but take it for all in all it was pretty tame.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Euan, zooming in on the same shot but rather higher up.

    “That’s the same sho— Can you choose which part of the screen to blow up?” croaked Derry.

    “This isn’t yer ordinary common or garden video machine here, ya know!” replied Bill, greatly hurt. “—Yeah. Why not?”

    Derry sighed. “Give us the bush again,” he said to Euan. Euan obliged. Derry sighed again.

    “Yeah, we thought it was good, in our humble engineering way,” allowed Bill. “There was a bloke, too, never get that on EnZed Tee-Vee at all, but we never bothered with him, eh, Euan?”

    “Nah. –There’s a good bit further on,” he offered.

    “Pray proceed,” replied Derry with dignity.

    Sniggering, Euan obliged.

    After the deep silence that had followed the good bit, Derry said thoughtfully: “Roddy reports that Georgy’s nipples are pale rose-pink and the bush is dark auburn.”

    “Here! Pah deevong longfong!” returned Bill in horror, retrieving Euan’s headphones from round his neck and allowing them to snap closed on his ears.

    “Ow,” said Euan mildly. “Georgy’s all right,” he offered.

    “Er—yes. I detect a note of solidarity: is that some sort of teen peer-group remark?” Derry asked Bill, rolling his eyes rather.

    Bill winked. “Indicates that the female in question may be seen as a person rather than as a sex-object if a huge effort is made—yeah. Something of the sort.”

    “That’s what I thought,” he admitted.

    Bill sniggered.

    Euan appeared oblivious, merely turning a switch which lit up the screen above the display of the good bit. “Hasn’t started, yet,” he reported. “We could put on that video of the West Indies slaughtering the Aussies.”

    Derry swallowed. “You mean you can display your lighting cues and so on and watch a video and watch the cricket at the same time?”

    “Basically, yes. Not necessarily the cricket, whatever TVNZ happens to be broadcasting at the moment in Q,” explained Bill courteously. “But we certainly included that feature for cricketorial purposes, yes.”

    Euan sniggered gently, and added: “One year, we—” He stopped.

    “He can take it,” Bill assured him.

    “Well, one year we—um—rigged up a camera in the female dressing-room,” admitted Euan, gulping, “only—um…” He gulped again, and looked at Bill.

    “Angie spotted it,” he said, making a wry face.

    Derry shook gently all over, for a long, long time.

    “Ooh,” breathed the world-famous producer-director, as he sat in a very unobtrusive way on his stolen chair on the very edge of the electricians’ stand, leaning his elbows on the railing, peering at Georgy—who was not really that very far away as the crow flew—through his binoculars.

    Bill, elbows on the rail beside him, breathed heavily.

    “That kid’s missing it,” breathed Derry, not taking his binoculars off Georgy in a silver-grey satin bodice with Livia’s corset underneath it. Above a froth of silver-sprayed tulle, though that was irrelevant and immaterial at the precise moment.

    “Mm? Oh—Euan. That age, get it whenever they want it. Don’t know how lucky they are,” he said in a hoarse, glum whisper.

    Derry didn’t bother to point out that apart from the luckless Euan and the other boy with headphones, all the other boys now present on the electrician’s stand were thronging the rail with their tongues hanging out. He just breathed heavily.

    After a few moments Bill hissed: “She can act, too!”

    Derry nodded, though Georgy had not yet proven this, Adam’s lot were still Twilight Proceshing and she had not yet officially been noticed.

    “Wait until ya see the white dress!” said Bill happily, not bothering to lower his voice, as the audience was now oohing, aahing and laughing delightedly at the Dong. It wasn't as good as it might have been, though: one night last week, in desperation at the boredom induced by nigh on a week of inept student lovers failing to act and Livia’s lisping, the engineers had introduced a new feature: the nose not merely lighting up but flashing; but unfortunately this had reduced certain members of the audience to hysterics and the luckless Carolyn inside it to tears. Not to say Mac to a raving, frothing fury. So they had abandoned it.

    “White dress? What’s it like?” demanded Derry.

    “Um…” Bill frowned in an effort to remember if there were two. “Well, good,” he explained happily. “Teeny, weeny sprigs of white frothy stuff where any sprig with red blood in ’im would lang to be—”

    “Gypsophila,” said a sepulchral voice from Derry’s right elbow.

    “Er—very likely, yes. Thank you for that botanical contribution, Trev,” acknowledged Bill gracefully.

    Trev replied, unmoved: “My sister-in-law’s a florist.’’

    Derry hadn’t taken his eyes off Georgy. “When does she wear it?”

    “Um—not often enough,” Bill replied sadly.

    “When she’s in her bower,” said a helpful voice from beyond Trev’s right elbow.

    “His sister-in-law’s a bower-bird,” explained Bill gracefully. This went down rather well with the young Antipodeans, all of whom choked, but Derry’s brow wrinkled slightly. “Forget it, forget it,” he sighed. “—Cue spot,” he reminded the boy with the headphones.

    “I’ve got it!” he said huffily.

    He must have done, because he then spot-lit Adam with a large, handheld spot and, as the audience went raving mad, tracked him with it all the way down onto the flags where he noticed Georgy. Helped by another spot.

    “Ill met by—”

    Bill sagged a bit, hoping Derry wasn’t noticing him do it. The procession was always a tense period: you imagined five zillion things that could go wrong, with all those idiots bumbling around in fairy lights and noses and so on, and then it was the five zillion-and-bloody-first that actually did.

    ... “Thanks,” acknowledged Derry, handing Bill back his flask. “God, those lovers were—”

    “Unspeakable? Bloody awful?”

    “Worse than that,” he said grimly.

    “Inept?” Bill unwrapped a packet of sandwiches. “Salami or salami?” he offered politely.

    “I’ll have salami, thanks.” Derry bit gratefully into a sandwich. “Mush worse,” he said thickly through it. He swallowed. “Here, are you going to light up the bower during III,1?”

    “Not while the mechanicals are actually talking,” said Bill regretfully. “Though we thought of it: eh, boys?”

    “Yeah,” agreed the boy who had now taken Euan’s place at the console. “We done it once with Livia, and she was kind of um—”

    “Readjusting them,” said Bill with a wink. “The male members of the audience enjoyed it. Well, mine certainly did,” he allowed.

    Derry choked. “Thanks,” he said weakly as Euan handed him a can of Coke.

    “Only afterwards, ’Er Ladyship threw a wobbly, so we hadda desist,” explained Bill. “But we light up Georgy to start with—well, reminds the thickos in the audience that she’s there, see?”

    Derry nodded round his sandwich.

    “Then when Quince finally pushes off we light her up very slowly while Nigel’s walking up and down.”

    “And singing,” added Trev, producing a large, greasy packet which proved on unwrapping to contain cold pizza. Derry watched in horrid fascination as he took a huge bite of it.

    “Yeah. Disproving the theory that Maoris are naturally musical.” Bill offered his packet of sandwiches again.

    “Like the Welsh,” agreed Derry, taking one. “Though Harry Secombe disproved that years ago, of course. –Thanks: these are good.

    “Yeah: make ’em meself. She’s too mean with the butter and the salami.”

    “Butter?” said Derry in a weak voice.

    “Gotta keep our cholesterol count up. ’Specially at this altitude!”

    Derry smiled weakly.

    “Nah—Ange is on a salad kick,” he explained with a sigh. “Salad for bloody lunch, salad for bloody tea, and bloody fruit salad for bloody breakfast!”

    “Oh. Well, it is summer,” said Derry limply.

    Bill retorted huffily: “No, it isn’t, it’s flaming autumn, and my metabolism can’t cope without a belt of grease and starch, whatever her bloody women’s mags might say!”

    “Autumn?” said Derry weakly.

    “Yeah. If ya can count. –She’ll be changing into the white thing with the gypsy-whatsits ash we shpeak,” he noted, stuffing another salami sandwich into his mouth.

    Trev nodded round his cold pizza. Euan, with whom he had shared the pizza, nodded round his slice.

    “Gypsophila,” agreed Derry weakly.

    “Yeah,” agreed one of the other boys. “Anyone want a cold sausage roll? I’ve got heaps, they’re left over from my sister’s twenty-first,” he explained.

    “Acceptance would depend,” Bill warned Derry, “on the age his sister has attained as we speak.”

    “Er—quite.”

    The boy explained on a cross note: “It was last week: you remember, Bill, we had it on the Saturday, so I couldn’t do the show! But these are out of the freezer, Mum froze trays and trays of them and then didn’t need to cook them all. We just bung a few in the oven every day.”

    “Wait,” ordered Bill, grasping Derry’s arm with a ham-like hand. “Have these artefacts been cooked and reheated?”

    “No!” he said indignantly. “I just said: Mum froze—”

    “Yeah, yeah. –Prolly only TVP in ’em anyway,” he advised Derry. “I’d risk it.”

    Derry found that all the students were looking at him. Weakly he took a cold sausage roll.

    ... “What are you doing here?” said Bill indignantly five minutes later, as a panting, balding head appeared at the top of the ladder.

    Mac panted. “Came—see—him! Give us a hand—God’s sake!” he panted.

    Groaning, Bill got up and assisted him to haul himself up onto the platform.

    “Where’s that flask of yours?” he demanded.

    “Medicinal purposes only,” replied Bill firmly.

    Mac returned furiously: “This is medicinal, ya brainless cretin, didn’t you watch II, 2?”

    “Well, nah, mostly we watched the cricket,” he admitted. “But I admit Derry, here, hadda be revived after it. –Oh, go on.” He handed Mac the flask.

    Mac swiped his hand over the neck in a perfunctory way, and drank deeply. “Thanks,” he said, shuddering.

    Bill swiped his hand over the neck in a perfunctory way, and screwed the top back on. “I reckon they’re getting worse,” he said conversationally.

    “Stale. Yeah. And just shut up about it!”

    “Georgy’s good, though,” said Derry.

    “Yeah. –Geddup,” said Mac briefly to one of Bill’s students. Looking mildly surprized, the boy rose. Mac sank onto his chair. “Yeah, she is, isn’t she?”

    “How long do you intend to grace us with your presence, Mac?” enquired Bill.

    “Mm? Oh—thought I might stay up here for the whole of III. Why?”

    “Go and nick another chair,” said Bill resignedly. The boy nodded, and departed.

    “Those look good,” said Mac, eyeing the packet of sandwiches on Bill’s knee.

    Groaning, Bill held out the packet. “Salami or salami.”

    “Better take one of each, then.” Mac took two. Derry watched rather enviously: it hadn’t been a bad line, at all. And it had resulted in double the sandwich for half the effort.

    Mac chewed hungrily and opened his mouth to speak but before he could one of the students reported excitedly from the console that so-and-so was in. All the other students immediately clustered round him.

    “Good,” noted Mac. Lowering his voice, he said: “Well?”

    “I said: I think she’s good,” said Derry calmly.

    “WHAT?” he shouted.

    Derry smiled a little. “Good and good enough to eat, though I certainly wouldn’t dress her in those Victorian disasters of Livia’s.”

    “They weren’t designed for her!” replied Mac huffily. “In her last scene she wears a thing that Roddy dreamed up for her—not bad.”

    Derry sniffed slightly. “Mm. He’s already described it to me in minute detail.”

    “Ah, but has he described what we do with the lighting?” said Bill eagerly.

    “Uh—no,” Derry admitted cautiously.

    “Back-lighting,” said Bill, winking.

    “Really?” he said weakly.

    “Shows every line of her. Well, every square inch of her,” he admitted fairly. “She doesn’t know, of course.”

    “Oh. What about—um—the top?”

    “Well, no. Some cretin-head designed it in solid satin. But it is reasonably moulded to the form.”

    “Without the corset?”

    “Yep. Had we but world enough and time or possibly a French fashion designer or two, or yer actual space-age material as in the Grate Offshore, it could be more moulded to the form, I grant ya that, but for a pansy Pommy film designer, Roddy done pretty good.”

    “It’s low-cut. Shoe-string straps,” said Mac briefly.

    “Good,” replied Derry simply.

    “No back, but the straps are kinda criss-crossed. And they found her a pair of the wee fairy wings: the ones that just sprout from the waist,” explained Bill. “Looks like an angel.” He thought about it. “Well, no, not yer actual angel. More like a very, very young and delicious morsel that’s just begging to be taken in hand by a fatherly person of the right orientation, if yer get me drift.”

    “Dirty sod,” conceded Derry, grinning.

    “He gets me drift,” reported Bill.

    Mac sighed. “Yeah, I think you’ll like her,” he said mournfully to Derry.

    “Are you feeling all right, Dornford, dear?” asked Bill solicitously.

    “No, if ya wanna know, I— What did you call me?” he choked.

    Bill smirked. “Isn’t it your name?” he said blandly.

    Mac took a deep breath but decided that on the whole he’d better ignore the whole thing. “Never mind that. If ya wanna know, I’m feeling as jittery as Hell. It’s all gonna blow up in our faces: she’ll never agree to it, and God only knows which way Adam’ll jump. Probably agree to do the sequel to that bloody shoot-em-up epic filmed entirely in deepest Siberia, just to spite ya,” he pointed out to Derry.

    “Smacks of verisimilitude. Have a sandwich,” said Bill.

    They all had a sandwich.

    “What would help to persuade her?” said Derry finally.

    “So you do want her?” gasped Mac, turning puce.

    “God, yes! Wasn’t that self-evident?”

    “Other things were,” muttered Bill, “but not that actual point, no.”

    Derry just managed to ignore this.

   After a moment Mac admitted glumly: “Damned if I know how you could persuade her.”

    “I reckon we’re looking at it the wrong way,” said Bill after a certain amount of silence had elapsed. They looked at him without hope. “I reckon Adam’s gotta ask Georgy to go back to Pongo with him, first. Then if she agrees to that, the rest’ll be easy!”

    Derry sighed.

    “Do ya reckon he won’t, then?” said Bill.

    “I’ve spent the last few weeks trying not to speculate on it, actually, Michaels!” returned Derry angrily.

    Bill rubbed the whiskers. “Bugger.”

    “Suppose you got her a leave of absence or something, would she then?” said Derry desperately to Georgy’s H.O.D.

    “Might,” replied Mac dubiously. “Shouldn’t think so, though. Toleja what she said before, didn’t I?”

    Derry nodded glumly.

    “Doesn’t want to be a Nactress,” Bill summed up.

    “It’d only be for the one part!” said Derry heatedly.

    “Ssh, you’re drowning the cricket. What about this Mrs Margery stuff?” replied Bill austerely.

    Derry swallowed. “That’s sort of in the pipeline for some future date. I mean, Adam’s very keen to do Horner, but…”

    “Uh-huh,” noted Bill.

    “Look, I’ll start the Dream next bloody summer, your time, if only I can get her!” he said desperately.

    “According to your mate Charles, you can’t even get the backers,” replied Bill.

    “Charles is a damned blabbermouth! And in any case, I can—I have—if only Adam’ll play ball! And besides—” He broke off.

    “What?” said Mac heavily.

    Derry admitted cautiously: “Jake Carrano’s said that he’ll guarantee it if I put Georgy in it.”

    “What?” choked Bill.

    “Well, he can afford it!” said Derry crossly.

    “Did Polly talk him into it?”

    “No! She doesn’t know a thing about it. –He wants it to be a surprize for her,” he said on a sulky note.

    “Surprize when the Carrano mills. go down the vast gurgler of ye arty intellectual Offshore film,” noted Bill.

    “Um—well, he did make it a condition that I had to make it here and employ a local crew,” admitted Derry.

    Bill choked again, this time with considerably more enjoyment.

    “Well, Christ, how many bloody millionaires are there in the world ready to chuck their m—support filmed Shakespeare?” said Derry heatedly.

    “Only one, it would appear,” returned Bill smoothly.

    “Yeah,” he said, glaring.

    “Well, that’s all right, then: Georgy won’t have to go overseas: she might even agree!” said Mac.

    “Cloth-head,” returned Bill witheringly.

    “Moron,” agreed Derry grimly.

    They looked at him curiously.

    Mac turned purple. “Well, what— Oh, shit! I see, you mean if her and Adam— Oh, shit.”

    “Your genuine Catch 22 situation,” noted Bill. He stuffed the last sandwich into his mouth, rose heavily, noted without enthusiasm, “Music, ho,” and strolled off to the console, where he ruthlessly turned the cricket off.

    “‘Now, my Titania,’” said Adam: “‘wake you, my sweet queen.’”

    Derry shifted a little, eyes glued to the binoculars. After a moment, Mac swallowed. Bill actually wiped the back of his hand across his eyes.

    When it was over and Theseus was blahing on about his bloody hounds, Derry produced a large handkerchief and trumpeted into it.

    “In that scene,” he hissed hoarsely under cover of the muted squeaks from the stage and the loud rustlings and whisperings from the audience, “when Adam wakes her up, I thought he might scatter her with rose petals: y’know?”

    “The weeny heartsease petals having fallen off in the interval,” agreed Bill.

    “Yes,” he said simply.

    Mac shifted on his chair. “Could look good,” he muttered hoarsely.

    Derry shifted on his chair. “Yes.”

    “Last night,” said Bill conversationally, though in a lowered voice: “for obscure reasons, she was even juicier in that scene. Mine took well over half an hour to wear off.”

    Derry bit his lip, trying not to laugh. “Mm.”

    “And by that time she was on again in Roddy’s white and silver thing, so it was a wasted effort, really. Began to wonder if me hydraulics could actually hold out for the run of the thing—not getting any younger, ya know.”

    “Shut up!” hissed Derry, shoulders shaking helplessly.

    Bill grinned. “Oy, Trev,” he said: “make a note, that pinkish spot we used last night on Georgy in that scene is definitely the One.”

    “Righto.”

    Derry choked.

    … The great man’s elbows were once more on the railing. His binoculars were again trained unwaveringly on Georgy. Bill was again at his left, breathing heavily. His elbows were on the railing, too. Mac had disappeared in the interval between Acts IV and V, but if either of them had wasted a thought on him on, which they weren’t doing, they would have recognized that he’d be feeling the same as they were.

    After some time Derry eased his crotch.

    “It’s the way she smiles up at him during the bloody dance!” hissed Bill.

    “It’s the something,” muttered Derry, licking his lips. He lowered the binoculars, and sighed deeply. “I’ve gotta have her!”

    “I feel like that, too, old mate,” said Bill, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder. “But these are mere mid-life fantasies.”

    Derry shook him off, grinning. “Not that, you fool! –Well, yeah, I’d give a good few years of me life, I’m not denying it!” he said to Bill’s face of exaggerated astonishment. “But I meant for the film.”

    “Yeah, well, good luck. –She’s gonna go off in a minute,” Bill warned the great director.

    Hurriedly Derry glued the binoculars to his eyes again.

    “I’m so nervous,” confessed Georgy on the Saturday, gulping. “Worse than I was the first night I had to do it!”

    “Mm? Why, darling?” replied Adam vaguely, staring out of the window of his parents’ car at the motorway flashing past them. Christopher had demanded seats for Georgy’s last performance.

    “Because Derry’s going to be there,” gulped Georgy.

    Adam patted her knee in an absent fashion. “He won’t be there to see you, darling, he’s coming to see me in an effort to lend verisimilitude to the next fatuous argument he advances for my doing the part in his bloody film!”

    “Yes, I know,” conceded Georgy: “only somehow when I think of him looking at me acting, I get all trembly.”

    “Christopher’s a far more captious critic than any mere Derry Dawlish could be, I assure you!” said Melinda from the front seat, with a laugh in her voice

    “Yes.” Georgy twisted to stare out of the back window. “Oh, dear, Ross and Ngaio have lost us,” she reported.

    “They know the way,” said Christopher firmly.

    “Mm. You’re all going to be awfully early,” she said dubiously.

    “And Mac goes spare if strangers invade the dressing-rooms,” noted Adam detachedly.

    “Pooh!” said Dornford McIntyre’s sister crossly.

    “We’ll sit in the park for a bit and have a bottle of fizz,” said Christopher calmly.

    “Have you got one?” gasped his wife.

    “Yes,” he said simply.

    They drove on. After quite some time Georgy put a very timid hand on Adam’s knee. Adam covered it casually with his.

    “Darling, che gelida manina!” he said with an amazed laugh. “Dad, put your window up, Georgy’s frozen.”

    “I’m all right. It’s just my hands,” said Georgy in a squashed voice.

    “I keep telling you, don’t be nervous, Derry won’t care what sort of hash you make of it!” said Adam with a laugh.

    “No,” said Georgy in a squashed voice. “I know.”

    Derry lit a cigar. “Of course, knowing I’m there, she might be foul,” he admitted. “Nerves. That’s why I watched her a couple of nights on the sly.”

    “Yes,” agreed Polly mildly. “We’ll be in the other room,” she added, getting up from the dining table. “Come on, Jill. You don’t want to stay while they befoul their lungs, do you, Gretchen?” she added.

    Jill and Gretchen accompanied her obediently.

    “Why us?” cried Jill wildly when they were safely in the Carrano drawing-room. The big one: at this time of year, if you’d dined early enough to get into town to a show, the view over the sea was too good to miss.

    “Um—well, first I thought I’d better invite two sexy ladies for Maurice and Derry.”

    “Well, quite!” said Jill, rolling her eyes madly.

    “And then Mac said he couldn’t fit in any more seats in the front row. So I thought, blow it, I’ll ask someone who’d really like to see Georgy!”

    “We get it,” said Jill. “Do we ladies get a port, or anything?” she demanded of their hostess.

    Polly looked at her incredulously. “Behind that wall—”

    “Oh, of course!” Jill hastened over to the inner wall. She pressed a switch. “Ah!” she said, as panels rose smoothly, other panels slid back smoothly and the gigantic cavern of Sir Jacob’s main bar was revealed. It clashed a bit with the 18th-century Chinoiseries of the drawing-room, true, but this probably demonstrated that even multi-millionaires couldn’t have absolutely everything.

    “Glenlivet,” said Gretchen immediately.

    “Not a bad idea: scrub the port,” decided Jill. “Polly?”

    “No, I want to be sober for Georgy. Bill Michaels was raving about her.”

    “Ja, but Bill Michaels iss a sex maniac!” objected Gretchen.

    Polly replied calmly: “About her acting as well as her boobs, you fool,” and her lady guests both spluttered into their Glenlivets.

    The beaming Sir Jacob nudged his wife violently in the ribs, nodding furiously towards the archway, where Georgy, surrounded by her crowd of fairies, had just come on. Polly nodded her head very hard, in the hope that he might get the point that she had actually spotted her, and wouldn’t bash her in the ribs again.

    The lights changed, heads turned and the Twilight Procession came on, elves’ horns, Dong’s nose and so on glowing appropriately, since, as they were now off Daylight Saving, it was pretty dark. The audience oohed, aahed and laughed delightedly. Sir Jacob, by some amazing visual feat actually spotting Adam, nudged his wife violently in the ribs and nodded furiously again.

    “Yes!” hissed Polly. “I see him! And if you bash me like that once more it’ll be grounds for divorce!”

    He subsided, with a very hurt expression.

   ... “‘Til I torment thee for this injury!’” sneered Adam.

    There was a collective sigh from the audience. Jake got out his hanky and trumpeted loudly into it.

    ... “Wasn’t she good?” gasped Georgy’s sister in the pause between the rabid clapping at the end of Act II, Scene 1 and the beginning of Act II, Scene 2 in another part of the wood.

    “Great!” agreed Ross heartily, trying not to wonder too hard how the cricket was going.

    “What do you think, Mum?” added Ngaio nervously, as Mrs Harris hadn’t spoken.

    Mrs Harris had been cautiously fishing in her purse for her hanky. She blew her nose angrily. “Of course she’s good!” she said crossly. “I always said she could do it!”

    The Cornwells went all numb.

    ... “‘Silence away; now all is well. One aloof stand sentinel,’” recited Ginny carefully—and loudly, she’d recently been told by a frothing Mac she was bloody inaudible.

    Sir Jacob, beaming and nodding, nudged his wife violently in the ribs again. Polly glared.

    “Sorry!” he hissed.

    Polly took a deep breath.

    ... “Change places with me, would you, Derry?” she said grimly in the interval between Acts II and III. “It’ll save me from being bashed to death in me prime.”

    “I thought he was nudging you,” agreed Derry.

    Sir Jacob bent forward indignantly. “I was not! Well, I wasn’t bashing her!”

    Too late: Derry and Polly had changed places. Derry then recalled that there was fizz in the S.C.R. for the front row and assorted guests of the cast, so they all rose; but, as Polly noted firmly, when they came back it would be Derry who sat beside the Hooded Elbow of Pohutukawa Bay.

    Sir Jacob laughed uproariously during Bottom’s scene with the infatuated Titania, but at the end of it the hanky came out again. “Poor little thing,” he noted to Derry.

    Derry’s eyes twinkled. “Yes.”

    “He thinks it’s real!” hissed Polly from Derry’s other side as the lights went through an interesting sequence, musicke played and the audience variously wriggled, shuffled, whispered and peered at its programmes.

    “I do not!” he hissed indignantly.

    … “What do you think of her, Christopher?” asked Maurice with a twinkle in his bright blue eye during the interval between Acts III and IV.

    “Exquisite,” said Christopher firmly. “Grace plus intelligence.”

    “We know that, dear,” said Melinda with a gurgle in her voice: “but what do you think of her acting?”

    Maurice choked into his fizz.

    “Very amusing,” said Christopher coldly. “I think it’s a very interesting interpretation, since you’re so obviously dying to hear my opinion. I’d always envisaged them more as a typical quarrelling middle-aged couple. Georgy’s giving it the tensions of a very young marriage.”

    “Cor,” said Melinda numbly.

    “Lumme,” agreed Christopher’s brother.

    Christopher stalked away from them with a very annoyed expression on his face.

    “Struck, isn’ ’e?” remarked Maurice.

    “Mm.”

    “Er—Adam said anything to y—? No,” he said humbly as his sister-in-law’s glare scorched him where he stood.

    ... Virtually the entire audience was reduced to furtive scrabbling in its purses or pockets for its hankies this time as Adam woke Georgy. Ngaio cried so hard she had to have Ross’s hanky as well as her own.

    “I forgot it was her,” she explained in a whisper, as Theseus blahed on about his hounds.

    Ross nodded, a puzzled expression on his face as he tried to follow the dialogue under the mistaken impression that it related to the plot.

     Further along the front row Derry said grimly in Sir Jake’s ear: “I’ve gotta catch that!”

    “Eh?” his guarantor returned blankly. “—Oy, what’s ’e on about? Dogs?”

    “Nothing. Ignore it,” said Derry heavily. “Polly,” he hissed: “I’ve got to catch that quality!”

    Polly nodded enthusiastically. “You’ve got to catch Georgy first, though,” she noted, sniffing a bit and blinking.

    Derry glared.

    ... “Flowers!” gasped Melinda in horror, clapping a hand to her mouth. “Christopher, we forgot!”

    “I didn’t,” he returned smugly as the beaming little Indian boy presented yet another bouquet to the visibly blushing and overcome Georgy.

    Melinda sagged where she sat. “You might have told me,” she said faintly.

    Christopher merely looked smug.

    “Those are mine,” noted Maurice as the little Indian boy presented Georgy with a gigantic bouquet of very, very pale pink long-stalked rosebuds. With gypsophila and maiden-hair fern.

    “Very appropriate,” said Polly weakly.

    Maurice sniggered faintly.

    “No, it was very generous of you, Maurie,” she amended with a smile.

    Maurice clapped madly. “’CORE!” he yelled, regardless of the fact that as it was Shakespeare, this wasn’t possible. “Yeah!” he agreed.

    “Those’ll be ours,” noted Sir Jacob as the little boy staggered up to Georgy weighed down by a huge bouquet of frilly white orchids.

    “Pretty,” said Derry drily.

    “Yeah!” he beamed with simple pleasure, clapping like mad. “BRAVO!” he yelled, regardless of Georgy’s sex—though in view of the garments she’d worn in the course of the evening this hardly seemed possible. “That’s young Ranjit, y’know. Puriri Junior Tennis Champion,” he added on a proud note.

    “Really?” said Derry weakly.

    Behind the scenes, Mac was fidgeting.

    “What’s up?” said Angie in astonishment.

    “He hasn’t— Ranjit!” he hissed. “Give her the yellow one!”

    Grinning, Ranjit retrieved a huge bouquet of yellow rosebuds and staggered on with it. More frantic applause.

    “Were those yours?” said Angie weakly.

    “Yeah. Why not?” he returned, sticking out his chin in a way that reminded her forcibly of her own offspring when in particularly recalcitrant moods, aged about two.

    “Uh—nothing,” she muttered.

    ... “Darling, what a triumph!” said Adam with a laugh, kissing Georgy’s forehead lightly as they finally came off together to the dying sounds of the last bout of frenzied clapping and cheering.

    “Yes,” she said faintly. “I thought I’d be awful, I was so nervous, with Derry and Polly and Mum and everybody out there.”

    “And Dad,” agreed Adam with a shudder.

    Georgy smiled up at him. “And Christopher. Wasn’t it lovely of him to send me a bouquet?’

    “Did he?” he said numbly.

    Georgy nodded and beamed. “Everybody did! But I like the little bunch you put in the dressing-room for me best. It’s dainty.”

    “Good. Um—what on earth shall we do with them all?” he said with a laugh. “Take them round to Ariadne Nicholls’s old folks’ home?”

    Georgy’s face fell ten feet. “I suppose so,” she said in a small voice.

    Adam goggled at her. “Sweetheart, fill the flat with florists’ blooms if you like: I don’t mind! But will Mrs Mayhew have enough cut crystal vases for them all?”

    Georgy smiled. “Perhaps we could have them in the flat for a couple of days, and then just keep one or two and take the rest to the old folks’ home.”

    “Mm,” he said, giving her a bit of a squeeze. “We’ll do that.”

    “Adam,” said Georgy with a smothered giggle, “where are you going?”

    “Huh? Oh,” he said with a smile, realizing they’d reached the female dressing-room. “I’d better go off to my segregated cell, I suppose. Though it’s been a sad trial, watching Egeus struggling with that beard every night of the run!”

    “Yes, Mac should have let him do what he wanted to in the first place.”

    “What?” he said blankly.

    “Grow his own. When he got the part he said he would but Mac said that was nonsense.”

    “When?” said Adam faintly.

    “Um—he did most of the casting back in September.”

    “September?” said Adam numbly.

    Georgy nodded innocently.

    “You mean this lot have had since September to get up in their parts?” he gasped.

    “Um—yes. We couldn’t start rehearsals till after exam marking, of course.”

    Muttering wildly: “September!” Adam tottered off down the cloisters, a broken man.

    Georgy gave an uncertain giggle and went in to change.

    “Lovely!” said Derry with huge enthusiasm, enveloping her in a bear-hug and kissing her thoroughly.

    Georgy smiled uncertainly. “Thank you.”

    Mac muttered in Angie’s ear: “Thank God you persuaded her to stay in that dress.”

    “At your orders, mein Führer,” she replied, saluting. “But I don’t think that wearing her jeans at this juncture would have swayed the Grate Director, would it? Not from what Bill’s been saying, at any rate.”

    “Spreading all over he bloody S.C.R., you mean,” said William Michaels’s colleague grimly.

    “Yeah,” agreed William Michaels’s wife simply.

    Mac sighed. “Fortunately she’s too simple to pick it up.”

    “Yeah. When’s he going to speak to her?”

    “Tomorrow morning. If he can,” said Mac, eyeing his nephew cautiously. Adam was absorbed in charming Jill, Gretchen, Ngaio, and little Ranjit’s very beautiful mother. He didn’t notice Mac eyeing him and he didn’t register the exact nuances of Derry’s rapturous reaction to Georgy.

    “Ah,” said Angie.

    “Mm. Reckons he’ll send a car up for her round ten o’clock, while Adam’s still snoring his head off.”

    “Will he be?” said Angie weakly.

    “If ’e’s on form—yeah,” replied Adam’s uncle simply.

    … “SPEECH!” shouted Sir Jacob, rapping on his plastic champagne glass. “Come on, Mac!” he urged.

    Several other voices, notably that of William Michaels, M.E., Ph.D., also urged Mac to speak, with more or less malice evident in their tones.

    “Yeah, all right,” groaned Mac. “All RIGHT! SHUDDUP!” he bellowed.

    “Stand on the bar,” suggested Bill into the resultant silence.

    Mac gave him a quick glare. “Fill your glasses, everyone, let’s have a toast,” he ordered.

    Those whose glasses weren’t full got refills.

    “Right. If everybody’s quite ready,” said Mac with a pointed glare at Bill, who having filled other glasses had now discovered his own was empty and was fossicking for another bottle, “I’d like to say a few words.”

    “’RAY!” cried a voice from the background.

    “And you can shut up, too, or wouldja like to make this speech yaself?” said Mac evilly.

    “No,” replied Nigel simply.

    “I just wanna say, thanks to Georgy for stepping in and rescuing us,”—“Me?” gasped Georgy, turning puce and spilling her champagne—“and for giving such a bloody wonderful performance!” said Mac loudly, raising his glass.

    “To Georgy!” agreed Adam with a laugh, raising his glass with one hand whilst handing her his handkerchief with the other.

    “Georgy!” agreed Joel loudly.

    “Yeah: Georgy!” agreed Nigel loudly. “And down with Livia,” he muttered to Stephen.

    “Yeah.” Stephen drank grimly as everyone else beamed, cried “Georgy!” and drank.

    “Hip, hip—” cried Nigel loudly.

    “HOORAY!” bellowed everyone, particularly the students and Bill. They did it three times, too, by which time it was blindingly evident that Georgy was wishing she was dead.

    “Go on, darling!” prompted Adam loudly into the subsequent silence.

    “What?” she gasped.

    “Say thank you.”

    “Um—thank you very much, everybody,” said Georgy in a tiny voice, fiery red.

    “She couldn’t have done it without your help and co-operation,” agreed Adam with a lovely smile, pitching his voice without effort to the back of the S.C.R.

    “Um—no!” she gasped.

    He laughed, put his arm round her and kissed her forehead. “You were wonderful, darling!”

    “Wonderful!” agreed Joel loudly, busily refilling glasses. “Here’s to the best Titania this century!”

    “What? No!” gasped Georgy, as everybody smiled and laughed and murmuring various complimentary things, or in the case of certain members of the cast and crew, shouting them, drank to her again.

    ... “That was dreadful,”  she said into the dark of the car going home.

    “I thought it was pretty average,” replied Adam in some surprize.

    Joel had ridden in with the Cornwells and Mrs Harris, but he was going home with the Blacks, squashed in on Georgy’s other side. “It was marvellous!” he said indignantly.

    “Mm? Not the performance, you fool, the bloody do!” said Adam irritably.

    “It was terribly embarrassing, Joel,” said Georgy glumly.

    “It didn’t dawn on her,” explained Adam carefully, “even at the point where Angie stopped her forcibly from changing back into her jeans, that the party was for her.”

    “No,” said Georgy in a squashed voice.

    “What, not even after all those bouquets, literal and metaphorical?” said Christopher with a laugh.

    “No.”

    “Manifestly not, and for Heaven’s sake keep your eyes on the road!” ordered Melinda crossly.

    Christopher hadn’t taken his eyes off the road. “Yes, dear,” he agreed meekly.

    Melinda gave a very loud sigh.

    “Married bliss,” noted Joel.

    Adam snorted.

    “Yes,” said Georgy in a tiny voice.

    Joel cringed in his seat, realizing too late he’d said the wrong thing entirely. Well, depending on how you looked at it.

    “Well?” said Jill.

    “Don’t ask me!” replied Polly angrily.

    “He looks after her at the party,” said Gretchen dubiously.

    Jake was more than capable of keeping sober at any do, even if there was real champagne, and he’d had only two glasses of fizz throughout the evening, and so was driving. He made a sound halfway between a snort and a grunt, not taking his eyes off the road.

    Gretchen, though too drunk to drive, was by request in the front seat of the Mercedes, next to him. She would have enjoyed the Rolls more, but Jake preferred the Merc if he was driving himself. It was true that it was a much more expensive model than any of her relatives back home drove, so that was considerable consolation to her. She looked at him uncertainly.

    “Ja? I think he shows during the toasts he quite cares for her, by his manner?”

    “Shows ’e quite cares to show off in public, too,” he grunted.

    “We knew that,” noted Jill coldly from the back.

    “He had Kamala Singh eating out of his hand,” said Polly glumly.

    “We knew that,” noted Jill coldly.

    “Look, I’m not clairvoyant any more than you lot are!” she cried angrily.

    Jill sighed. “No. Sorry.”

    “Has Joel said anything to you?” she asked without hope.

    “No,” said Jill glumly.

    Polly hadn’t thought so. She sighed.

    “I tried to pump Christopher Black,” reported Gretchen sadly.

    “Brave woman!” said Polly, shuddering.

    “Yeah,” agreed Sir Jacob simply. “Get any joy?”

    “No. Vell, he says Georgy iss worth ten times his son, but perhaps this iss because at this precise moment he iss flirting simultaneously with Kamala and Ngaio vhile Georgy iss left to talk to a lizard and the Bottom.”

    “I think the lizard might be Nigel’s new girlfriend,” explained Polly.

    “Shut up!” said her husband crossly. “Stop introducing red herrings! –Said that, did ’e, Gretchen?”

    “Ja, but ve already know this, Joel tells us he says it many times.”

    “Oh,” he said lamely.

    “Besides, it doesn’t get us any forrarder.”

    “No,” he said glumly, not remarking her linguistic prowess.

    “Derry’s going to speak to her tomorrow,” said Polly after a pause.

    “Yes,” they all said dully.

    “Well, don’t you think—”

    “NO!” they all shouted.

    “Um—no. Well, if Adam doesn’t say anything definite…”

    “Yes,” said Jill grimly. “I think we have been over this before, Polly.”

    “Ten million times,” groaned her husband.

    “Ja. Shut up, Polly, I cannot bear it: vhateffer the outcome, it’ll be bad for Georgy,” said Gretchen.

    “Yeah. Ordinarily I mighta said that was yer German whatsit,” explained Sir Jacob illuminatingly, “but in this instance I tend to agree with her.”

    There was a pause.

    “Would it be altogether bad if Adam went off to Overseas without her and she turned to Stephen?” ventured Polly.

    “YES!” shouted Jill and Jake without pausing to think.

    Gretchen had paused to think. “Vell, not altogether. But Mac says although he vill get his degree all right, Stephen Berry iss not a first-class scholar.”

    “Will he offer him a job?” asked Polly immediately.

    “No. Vell, there vill be a job going, I think, but Stephen vill have to apply against the competition.”

    Polly scowled. “I think it could turn out well.”

    “So do I, though he is dull as vell as beink a second-class scholar,” noted Gretchen.

    “After Adam McIntyre?” said Sir Jacob grimly.

    His passengers were glumly silent.

    “You want to talk to me?” said Georgy faintly.

    “Yes. He’s still asleep, is he?” asked Derry.

    “Yes. He won’t have heard the phone, we’ve got it turned down low and the passage door’s shut.”

    Derry wasn’t surprized. “Mm. Well—”

    Georgy naturally assumed he must want to get her on his side about Adam doing Oberon in his film. “He won’t take any notice of what I say,” she said quickly.

    “Mm? Oh! Uh—never mind, Georgy, let’s talk about it face to face, mm?”

    “All right, if you want me to,” said Georgy dubiously. “Only it’ll take me ages to get down there, Derry, there’s hardly any buses on a Sunday and it takes about forty minutes to get to the bus stop.”

    “No! My dear child! No, I’ve sent a car up for you. Told him to wait at the bottom of your drive. Should be there any minute now,” he added, glancing at his watch.

    “Oh,” said Georgy in a small, bewildered voice.

    “Look, just nip out and see if he’s there, darling. Big black car.”

    “Um—yes, all right,” she said uncertainly.

    Derry waited. After a bit he could hear her talking to someone. He sent up a silent prayer that it wasn’t Adam.

    “Who was that?” he said immediately she came back on the line, panting and gasping: “Hullo? Are you there?” Or, rather, “Are you thee-are?”: they’d definitely have to do something about the accent before they started filming.

    “Miss McLintock and her dog,” explained Georgy. “She said she asked the man what he was doing and he said he was waiting for me.

    “Good, so he got there.”

    “Yes. Um—what shall I tell Adam?”

    “God, don’t wake him up!” he gasped.

    “No, I wasn’t going to,” replied Georgy in mild surprize. “Only one day I—I went out without making sure he knew, and—and he was furious.”

    Derry raised his eyebrows very high, simultaneously pulling the corners of his mouth down very low, but didn’t allow any emotion to show in his voice as he said: “Well, leave him a note, Georgy. Just say that you’ve come into town to see me, and that I said to ring me if he’s worried.”

    “Yes, I suppose that would be all right. He makes much better coffee than me, so… I could leave him some fruit salad, he likes that in the mornings, sometimes,” she said in a little anxious voice.

    Derry found he was glaring ferociously at the blameless Charles. He swallowed. “Yes, you do that, sweetheart, and then just pop straight on out to the car, mm?”

    “Yes. All right, Derry. Only it won’t do any good.”

    “Never mind, we can’t really talk on the phone. I’ll see you soon. Bye-bye,” he said firmly, hanging up. “Sod the bloody bugger!” he shouted furiously, seizing a cushion and hurling it across the room.

    “Undoubtedly,” replied Charles, not ceasing to goggle at him. “If that’s what takes your fancy.”

    Derry made a furious growling noise and began to pace up and down.

    “Won’t he let her come?”

    “Let her! He’s not even awake!” he shouted.

    “Well, that’s what we thought. And it is only ten-thirty.”

    Derry kicked a couch furiously. Fortunately it was a well padded one.

    “What is it? Has he forbidden her ever to appear before a camera, or what?”

    Derry threw himself onto the couch, scowling, and crossed his arms. “Or what, I suppose.”

    There was a short pause. “Well, what?” said Charles weakly.

    “Oh, nothing, Charles,” he said, sighing. “No, don’t look at me like that, I’m not getting at you, or—or attempting to hide anything from you or… It really was nothing, she was just worrying about His Lordship’s coffee and—and bloody fruit salad,” he ended on a weak note.

    “Oh, well, in that case feel free to chuck as many cushions and kick as many couches as you like!” said Charles with complete understanding.

    “Me?” faltered Georgy.

    Derry had put her on the sofa and had pulled up a big chair very close. He leaned forward urgently and took both her hands in his large ones. “Yes, you. I’ve watched you three nights this week, Georgy: you can do it!”

    “But I’m not an actress,” she said faintly.

    Derry squeezed her hands gently. “I know that. I don’t want some slick lipsticked creature from London or Hollywood, I want you. We can iron out any rough spots in the acting as we go.” He twinkled at her in an avuncular fashion. “Only from what I’ve seen this week, there won’t be many of those!”

    Georgy swallowed. After a moment she said faintly: “Does Adam know?”

    “Uh—no,” he said uneasily, feeling rather warm and wishing he’d turned the air conditioning up.

    “I see.”

    “Georgy, if you agree, so will he!” said Derry urgently. “It’ll be marvellous, the two of you together: the sparks will fly! You must have noticed the reaction you were getting from your audiences. The film can’t fail if we can capture that!”

    “Ye—um—he doesn’t want to,” she said, swallowing. “I don’t know why. But he doesn’t, he keeps saying rude things about tights and spangles and—um—tattoos.”

    Since Roddy’s latest inspiration was to slather Adam’s body in suntan makeup and dress him solely in a cache-sexe made entirely of pearls on stockingette, with possibly a pearl in each ear and the hair swept up with gel with the odd seed pearl on its tips, Derry was able to reply with every appearance of urgent sincerity: “He won’t have to wear tights or spangles or tattoos! I know he’s terrified of making a fool of himself, but even if we did put him in tights and spangles he wouldn’t look a fool: his body’s too damn’ good! And with you in it, Georgy, he’ll be a knock-out! You must have seen how his performance improved this week, compared to when he was doing it with Livia!”

    “I thought he was good then,” she said shyly.

    “Yes, he was good, he’s a competent craftsman!” he said impatiently. “But with you, he—he— Well, I’ve already said it, Georgy: you strike sparks off each other!”

    Georgy swallowed. She hesitated then said in a very low voice: “What if he likes some other lady by then? It’ll be a failure and you’ll have wasted all that money.”

    “If I’m willing to take the gamble, can’t you?” returned Derry, squeezing her hands gently.

    She blinked a little. “I don’t think so,” she admitted.

    Derry chewed his lip. “Hasn’t he said anything to you about what he wants after this?”

    “No,” she said in the thread of a voice.

    He released her hands abruptly and sat back, scowling terrifically and breathing very hard.

    After quite some time Georgy ventured: “There’s my job and everything, too. I don’t think I—”

    “Mac’ll wangle you some sort of leave, that’ll be no problem!” he said hastily. “Besides, we’d be filming somewhere between—um—say the end of October and the end of March. You’ll have your long vacation for most of that time, won’t you?”

    “Yes, but there’s all my exam marking and preparation for the next year.”

    “Oh. Um—well, we’ll work that out, Georgy. Mac will give you plenty of leeway—rearrange your class schedule, or something. It’s not as if I was proposing dragging you off to Britain in the middle of your academic year, after all!”

    “No. –Did you say Jake was putting money into it?”

    “Mm. Guaranteeing us.” He hesitated. “Only on condition we film it here and use you,” he admitted.

    Georgy went very red. “Polly must have talked him into it,” she said faintly.

    “No, it’s his own idea. Well, using you was my idea, the minute I set eyes on you!” he said hurriedly. “But—uh—I mentioned it to Jake and he said he’d make that a condition.”

    After a moment she whispered: “You mean if I’m not in it you won’t get the money?”

    “Yes, exactly!” he said on a pleased note, believing she was beginning to see sense.

    Her lips trembled. After a few moments she whispered: “That’s blackmail, Derry.”

    “No, it isn’t!” he said indignantly.

    Georgy gave him a straight look.

    “Uh—no,” he said, sweating freely and again wishing he’d turned the bloody air-conditioning up: “it’s economic realities, sweetheart! I mean, angels are like that! Shit, I mean—”

    “I know what an angel is,” replied Georgy. She frowned. “If I told Jake I didn’t want to do it, I think he’d say it didn’t matter.”

    Derry didn’t think so for a moment. Sir Jake had appeared to believe that Georgy’s being in it was the sole factor that would pacify his wife on the subject of the amount of his personal fortune he was prepared to gamble on the venture. Whether he was right or wrong in this opinion was hardly material: the point was, he was convinced of it.

    “Um—no,” he said lamely, licking his lips nervously, “I don’t think he would, sweetheart. It was a sine qua non. Um—it’s in the preliminary agreement,” he admitted.

    “Oh,” said Georgy.

    There was a short silence.

    “Look, please, Georgy!” said Derry desperately.

    Georgy returned shyly: “Derry, there must be lots and lots of ladies—”

    “Well, I haven’t found one! I’ve been looking for my ideal Titania for years and it’s you, Georgy!” he cried.

    Georgy went very red. “Really?”

    “Yes! Look, any other girl would look on it as a lucky break!” he cried. “Kids dream about being cast in starring rôles in the movies, for God’s sake!”

    Georgy smiled a little. “Mm. I know.” She paused, and then added: “I’m not a girl, I’m twenty-seven.”

    Derry replied vigorously, if somewhat incongruously: “I know, and I want to get you on film before your neck gets creases in it!

    Georgy touched her slender neck, gaping at him.

    “Yes. Can’t stand seeing a woman in her thirties cast as a young thing. –The neck always shows it first,” he explained.

    “Oh,” she said in a wondering voice.

    “It need only be a one-off, you can go back to your blessed Anglo-Saxon afterwards,” he said limply.

    Georgy replied simply: “I’d have to, who else would want me to be in a film?”

    Derry opened his mouth and shut it again. “Mm. Well, you were born to be Titania. -My Titania,” he added firmly. “Will you?”

    Georgy’s lips trembled again. Her hands shook slightly and she clasped them together tightly on her slender knees, rather wishing she’d worn jeans instead of shorts: it was cold in Derry’s suite.

    “I think I would, if it was all right about my job,” she admitted in a trembling voice, “only if Adam’s going to be in it and—and he doesn’t want me any more by then, I don’t think I could. I couldn’t kiss him and pretend to be in love with him and—and everything.”

    Derry had grasped that. He sighed heavily.

    “Maybe I could do it if it was someone else,” ventured Georgy in a tiny voice.

    He sighed again. “Mm.”

    Then there was a long silence.

    Finally Derry said hoarsely: “Look, Georgy, if by some miracle my luck changes entirely and Adam asks you to—well, to live with him or marry him or something: will you do the part then?”

    Georgy licked her lips nervously. “Um—I think so.” She looked at him shyly and blushed. “I have sort of thought about what I’d say if he—if he wanted to.”

    Derry grimaced ferociously. He got up and turned away from her. “I’m sure you have,” he said harshly, glaring out across the harbour.

    “But it’s only a stupid daydream,” she said.

    Derry swung round and shouted furiously: “It wouldn’t be, if he had the sense of a two-year-old retarded cretin with galloping Alzheimer’s!”

     While Georgy was still goggling at him Charles came in. “Did you hear that?” said Derry grimly.

    “The whole city heard that. In fact”—he glanced at the window—“your friend Rangitoto must have heard it.”

    “Fuckwit!” he shouted. “She will if that sod still wants her!”

    “Yes, I did hear that. –This suite’s so unsoundproof you can hear Derry snoring from one end of it to the other,” he explained to Georgy.

    She gave a nervous giggle and clapped her hand over her mouth. She looked apologetically at Derry over the hand.

    “Wish I could use that,” he muttered, scowling.

    Charles ignored this and went over to the bar. “Here,” he said, handing Georgy a small, not very strong brandy and ginger.

    “What is it?”

    “Ginger ale with a drop of brandy. Get it down you, you look as if your blood-sugar level’s dropped to nothing.” He handed Derry a small brandy and added unkindly: “You look as if your cholesterol count’s in the danger zone, not to say your blood pressure, but possibly this won’t be the last straw.”

    Derry took it, muttering under his breath.

    Georgy sipped hers cautiously. “This is nice. Not as nice as rum and pineapple juice, though,” she reported.

    Charles winked at her. “We don’t have those exoteek South Seas drinks in our suite: Derry’s relentlessly North-oriented. What you folks Downunder call old-fashioned.”

    She gave an explosive giggle.

    “That’s better. –Come on, I’ll drive you back,” he added.

    “Um—well—thank you very much! Do you know the way?”

    “I’ve got a map,” replied the competent Charles firmly. “Keep off the booze, Derry, it won’t solve the problem,” he advised, going over to the door.

    Georgy put her glass down and got up. “Thank you very much for asking me, Derry,” she said politely.

    Derry groaned. “If I was a Catholic—no, dammit, if I was any sort of a believer, I’d light a candle!” he said with feeling.

    “On the whole, so would I,” said Georgy with a twinkle in her eye. “Bye-bye.”

    “Bye-bye, darling. He doesn’t deserve you,” he groaned, flinging himself onto the sofa and closing his eyes.

    She blushed, smiled uncertainly, and went out. “Will he be all right?” she said as they waited for the lift.

    “Mm.” Charles peered at her in the dimness of The Royal’s puce passage. “Will you?”

    “Yes. Nothing’s changed, for me. I was surprized that he asked me, of course.”

    Charles at this point experienced a furious desire to take Adam by the scruff of his neck, shake him until the breath had very nearly left his body, and then pound him to a bloody pulp with his bare hands. He was not unaware that it was the emotion that Derry must have been experiencing for some time. “Yes,” he said grimly. “You and bloody Adam are probably the only two living organisms left on the planet that haven’t realized you’d be perfect for the part.”

    Georgy turned puce. “Thank you!” she gasped. “I thought you were cross!”

    “Not with you, Georgy, I do assure you,” said Charles very grimly indeed. “Not with you!”

    “Oh,” she said, bewildered but docile.

    —Adam would, of course, be conscious during the bloody pulp part of it, thought Charles grimly. Every last, lingering second of it. Sod him.