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By Root 1238 0

to watch him on Sunday but I don’t think I’ll bother. This morning’s plane journey has finished me off nicely, thank you very much. The man next to me never stopped yammering. I suppose it simply doesn’t occur to some people that one might be trying to recover from the night before.” She took a large gulp of her drink. “I’d quite like to see the bullfight though, wouldn’t you? I do adore cruelty. Everybody back home’s too dreary, going on and on about the horses. Papa’s forbidden me across the threshold if I go to one. Can you believe it? That’s an added incentive.” She finished her drink. “I hope at least that I get a chance to hear some decent Spanish spoken. Everyone I meet in London seems to be talking the most disgusting Catalan; it’s quite hopeless. Not that I place much faith in what our brave little torero is going to sound like. He’s probably Andalusian, or worse still Basque. Wouldn’t that be the end? Just my eternal rotten luck! Oh do look, here comes the reconnaissance party.”

Stefan and the Casting Director, who turned out to be the Basil of her tirade, Basil Plinn-Jones, were coming toward the café. So then we were all introduced. Her name is Angela and she was described as the Plinn-Jones’ Girl Friday. And the man, the one on the listening end, was the Assistant Director, Robin something.

“I thought you might be Americans,” she said when we joined tables. “I do hope you didn’t mind my remark about his suit, but he looked too ridiculous, didn’t he?” She turned frankly to Bax. “It would be quite another story on you,” she stated baldly, her eyes measuring him for size.

We all had lunch together; a rather uncomfortable lunch. I was getting a slight déjà vu about it all. It seemed to me you could plunk them all down in the middle of the Contessa’s crowd and not miss one.

I didn’t think anyone was enjoying himself much, but when we started to leave Stefan asked us to have supper with them tonight at a restaurant in Ascain which is on top of one of the mountains, and Larry, curse him, said yes.

I suppose he knows what he’s doing.

Must stop now and get that letter off to Uncle Roger.

May 24

Friday

Last night was one of those evenings. I wouldn’t know what to call it. Eventful in an uneventful way. Boring; but interesting. Nothing much happening on the surface and everybody seething and stewing underneath—changing character all over the place.

We are caught in the middle of some mysterious psychological shuffle now, our loyalties shifting and sliding back and forth like ships in a storm.

First of all there was Bax’s revolt. He never does much talking, most of the time he’s just listening, but yesterday all the way back to our villa and for the rest of the afternoon there was a different quality to his silence: he was thinking. And when the time came for us to start out for Ascain he turned up in a dirty old sweat-shirt and announced calmly that he wasn’t going with us. He said he thought he had made it clear that he didn’t want to be in the movie and he didn’t like the people, so what was the point anyway?

So then Larry hit the ceiling and said he had to come along, that he’d spoil everything if he didn’t.

At this point Missy went over to Bax’s side. She told Larry to stop bullying him and leave the poor boy alone. She said why should he come if he didn’t want to? She said she didn’t much want to come either, they all sounded terrible. She said what difference did it make if Bax came or not, as long as he wasn’t going to be in the old movie anyway.

Larry said desperately, “Help me, Gorce, make him see the light.” And I said what could I do, and Larry said didn’t I see that Bax was our strongest link, our only selling point, and Missy wanted to know what Larry was getting so excited about; he certainly wasn’t going to take 10 per cent of our salaries, was he? And Larry looked at her as if she were a worm and asked if it ever occurred to her that he might want to direct a film sometime and that being around these people would enable him to learn something about how it all works.

I couldn’t help noticing