"They all get wrecked in the Goodwin Sands. The Kentish Knock, to be precise. And then there's this final prayer. 'Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east…' "

"In movies," the director said kindly, as to a child, "you don't want too many words. You see that? It's what we call a visual medium. Two more double scatches on the racks."

"I know all about that," Enderby said with heat, pouring whisky sightlessly for these two men. "When they did my Pet Beast it became nothing but visual clichés. In Rome it was. Cinecittà. The bastard. But he's dead now."

"Who's dead?"

"Rawcliffe," Enderby said. "He used to own this place." The two men stared at him. "What I mean is," Enderby said, "that there was this film. Movie, you'd call it, ridiculous word. In Italian, L'Animal Binato. That was Son of the Beast from Outer Space. In English that is," he explained.

"But that," the director said, "was a small masterpiece. Alberto Formica, dead now poor bastard, well ahead of his time. The clichés were deliberate, it summed up a whole era. So." He looked at Enderby with new interest. "What did you say your name was? Rawcliffe? I always thought Rawcliffe was dead."

"Enderby," Enderby said. "Enderby the poet."

"You did the script, you say?" the assistant and friend said.

"I wrote The Pet Beast."

"Why," the director said, taking out a visiting card from among embossed instruments of international credit, "don't you write us a letter, the shipwreck story I mean, setting it all out?"

Enderby smiled knowingly, a poet but up to their little tricks. "I give you a film script for nothing," he said. "I've heard of this letter business before." The card read Melvin Schaumwein, Chisel Productions. "If I do you a script I shall want paying for it."

"How much?" said Mr. Schaumwein.