That fell on stony ground all right. The voice said: 'We'll think up something later and dub it in. Right, let's go. Luiz!'

Luiz called: 'Here,' and didn't move. Neither did anybody else.

Another voice shouted: 'Bill says he's getting wind noise in the mike.'

'There isn't any wind. Let's go.'

'We need a scrim on that brute or you'll have too much underlight by the tree."

'Put it up, then. Right? Let's go.'

'With that scrim you'll have to come up to five-six in the pan.'

'Okay. Let's go.'

'Bill says it must be the leaves rustling then.'

'The leaves don't rustle if there isn't any wind. Let's go.'

'This is a tracking shot ending in a pan and a tilt with a change of focus and aperture. You want to zoom in as well and make movie history?'

'Sell it to Hitchcock. Let'sgo.'

'Bill says he thinks it must be water running.'

'If he'd come out from behind that bloody tree he'd see we're taking a shot of a bloody river! Let'sgo! '

Suddenly Luiz put on a broad hat and walked down to the bank. The card players jumped off the trolley. It went very quiet.

Two people shouted: 'Quiet! '

Then the camera trolley, pushed by the card-players, started to move. A dozen men ran into the water from the far side of the river, waving rifles. Spouts of water spat up around them with gunshot sounds, and several fell down. The rest waded on and threw themselves into the cover of the first palms as the camera reached the end of its rails.

Although they'd only been some sort of waterproof fire-crackertouched off electrically, the gunshots had made me jump.

Several people shouted again, the lights went off, the dead men climbed ashore and shook themselves like wet dogs, the card-players settled down on the edge of the trolley. The river flowed quiet and peaceful.

J.B. said: 'That looked good; they probably won't want to go on that again. Let's get to the Boss Man while they're setting up the next one.' I followed her down to the camera.

You couldn't mistake Whitmore. You were just surprised, stupidly, to find he looked so much like himself. Maybe you'd read too much about five-foot Hollywood heroes riding tall in the saddle. Not this boy: he was a clear six-foot-four in low-heeled boots, with a chest like a banqueting table and a skin of tanned horse-hide. The eyes really were permanently half-closed against the sun, the mouth really was set in a grim-humorous line, his voice really could have shifted a thousand longhorns up the Chisholm trail on volume alone. Somehow, you'd expected all this to switch off with the arc lights.

Yet why? He'd been standing and talking and looking like that for thirty years and it had made him several million dollars. Even if it hadn't begun that way, by now it was no more phoney than the way a bank clerk who's been at the job thirty years looks like a bank clerk.

J.B. was looking at me sideways, with a gleam of knowing amusement. 'Impressive, isn't it?' she said softly. 'I felt the same way, the first time.'

'Him and the Eiffel Tower.'

Whitmore was talking to the man who'd shouted 'Let's go', presumably the director. About fifty, stoutish, with grey hair and moustache and looking like an English colonel with strong black market connections.

They broke off as J.B. went forward. Whitmore said: 'Hi. What's new at the courthouse?'

'I'vegot your flying boy. All signed up.'

He looked at me, then reached out a huge blunt-fingered hand. 'Hi, fella. ' We shook hands. J.B. passed him the contract and he studied it.

He was wearing a thin bush jacket, khaki drill trousers stuffed into high-laced paratroop boots, a webbing belt and army holster and a wide crumpled hat with a snakeskin band.

He cocked his head at me in a gesture I knew as well as he did. 'You were the boy out in Korea, right?'

Here we went again. 'That's right, Mr Whitmore.'

'How many d'you knock down out there?'

'Three.'

'How many d'you shoot at?'

Three.'

He let out a big bark of laughter. 'That's good enough for me. Anybody got a pen?' He reached and tweaked the top of J.B.'s bathing dress. 'Got anything down there? No, not much.'

Several people laughed. She grinned, quickly and vividly, unembarrassed. With him, the gesture had been a simple, boyish dirty joke.

Whitmore raised his voice to Chisholm trail level. 'I'm paying three writers and I can't find a single goddamned pen!' The director gave him a pen.

He was about to sign when Luiz came up behind him, squelching in his wet boots and holding his damp trousers distastefully out from his legs. He looked, saw the contract, then looked at me and said sadly: 'Don't sign up with the Boss Man, my friend. You only end up with wet feet.' Then, to Whitmore, he added: 'He's Commonwealth, I trust?'

Whitmore looked at me sharply: 'Youare a Commonwealth citizen, right?'

'Yes.' I was probably looking puzzled again.

He signed with a quick rasping scribble and gave the pen back to the director, who looked at the nib sadly and tucked it away. Whitmore handed the contract to J.B. 'Explain to him about Eady, honey.' To me, he said: 'Stick around for some chow, fella. We'll talk then.' Then he walked off with the familiar rolling stride, chatting to a distant group of raggedly-dressed actors in a voice that shivered the palm fronds.

J.B. was studying me thoughtfully. 'I think you just joined the club, Carr. The Boss Man likes that Korean stuff.' Thethought didn't seem to be brightening her day much.

I said: 'It was twelve years ago, for God's sake.'

'The Boss Man's been around a long time. Come on: I'll see if we can't find a drink. They'll probably break for lunch after the next shot.' We went back through the grove to the lorry park.

By then some of the drivers and helpers were setting up a number of long trestle tables and unfolding more canvas chairs, but not moving as if they were worried about the world ending first. J.B. went over to one of the station wagons, brought out a big Thermos bucket, and produced a couple of tins of American beer. I jabbed them with a pocket screwdriver and we sat down in the shade of the car.

After a while I asked: 'What's all this Eady thing?'

'Eady plan. It's the ground rules for qualifying a picture as a British production. One' – she raised a finger – 'you've got to have a British company producing it. Two, eighty per cent of your salary budget has to go to Commonwealth citizens. Three, any studio work has to be done in Britain or Ireland. Then you qualify for Eady.'

'Which is what?'

'Sort of legal kick-back. They take a levy on all movie-house seats sold in Britain and pay it back to the producer as a percentage of his gross box-office take. It's running about forty per cent, now.'

I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. 'You mean if he makes say, a bundled thousand he gets paid another forty? Two hundred thousand and he gets eighty?'

'Right.'

I stared. 'Good times are here again, aren't they?'

She looked at me coldly. 'Movies aren't a way of printing your own money, Carr, the way they were before TV.'

'I know: all that glitters isn't gold; some of it's diamonds. Who is Eady, anyway?'

'Some guy in the British Treasury, I think.'

'He knew his Bible, didn't he? "To him that hath shall be given" and so forth.'

'It works out that way. I guess it was originally supposed to help the small producers.'

I thought for another moment. 'Just explain to me how you makethis picture an Eady one. Apart from these boys' – I nodded at the men setting up the tables – 'the place isn't exactly crowded with Commonwealth citizens.'

'They're there. The crew's mostly British: director, camera, sound, lights, the grips. We got the script done in London. And you're allowed to hold out two salaries when you come to figure your eighty per cent. Naturally you make them the highest ones: we made it female lead and Luiz.'