“Bleeding Hearts for Africa?” said Corinna dryly, lifting off her sunglasses.
“Africa Crisis,” said Julian. “Blast no—Drama. Drama out of a Crisis. Must be something in there.”
“Love Aid,” said Kate Fortune. “Love the Children Aid? Arms Around the Children?”
“Luvvie Aid,” said Rajiv.
“Now that’s not bad,” said Oliver. “Luvvie Aid. What d’you think? Bit flip?”
“Completely crazy.”
“Acts, acting, come on,” said Oliver. “African Acts, relief, famine, charity, Charitable Acts.” He turned to me with a long, smug look. “Charitable Acts. What about it?” Charitable Acts it was.
“I can put it into the Soft Focus slot in either two or three weeks’ time, but ten P.M. on a weekday is not ideal. Vernon Briggs will have to approve it, and if we want another slot it’ll have to come from him.”
There were a number of childish noises from around the table. Vernon Briggs was Oliver’s boss, from the old end-of-the-pier school of TV entertainment. Not a popular man with the younger celebrity.
“Like, OK, if I have to work with Vernon, then I’m, like, out of here,” said Rajiv.
“Now, come along,” said Oliver.
“Do you really think this is appropriate to a Soft Focus spot?” said Corinna. “I mean, it’s not exactly arts, is it?”
“We’re artists, aren’t we? Aren’t we? Is theater not art?” said Vicky. “I mean, I certainly think of myself as an artist. Aren’t we artists too?”
“Bloody crazy. Sitting here talking about this, that and the other,” roared Barry. “Is this art? Bloody nonsense. What is the performance? What is the performance? None of us has got a blind idea what the hell lines we’re supposed to be learning. Absolutely crazy.”
“Take no notice of him, my darlings. Mind’s completely gone. Vanished totally, years ago.”
“Well, it’s a fair-enough point,” said Oliver. “What is the heart of the show going to be? It has to be something short—we can’t count on more than an hour. The viewers have to feel they’re getting their money’s worth if they’re going to send cash. They want to see you doing something you wouldn’t normally do. It’s got to be simple and it needs a theatrical connection—”
“Can I just say something here?” said Eamonn Salt, in his flat monotone. “Obviously we’re very grateful for this turnout tonight.”
“Absolutely,” said Edwina Roper. “It’s fantastically generous of all of you to give up your time and energy to this wonderful cause. Thank you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to thank everyone too, on behalf of the camp at Safila.”
“Excuse me,” said Corinna, “excuse me. I find it rather odd that charity professionals should feel they have to be sobbingly grateful to a group of performers for a few days’ work. I think the gratitude should probably be the other way around.”
“Well, let’s say we’re all grateful to each other and try not to break down, shall we?” said Oliver, after an awkward moment. “Now what were you saying, Eamonn?”
“Yes, indeed,” Eamonn went on in his droning tone. “I think it would be helpful if the content of the program could somehow mirror what the appeal is about. The money raised will help in the short term, but essentially this is a political issue. There are things it is difficult for us, as a charity, to say, but you could say them for us.”
“Excuse me?” said Corinna. “If we all get up in front of the camera are we supposed to be saying what we think, or what you think? I mean, you know, like, everyone’s always saying we shouldn’t be ill-informed mouthpieces. So are we allowed to say what we think?”
“Well, let’s hear what SUSTAIN think first,” said Oliver.
“Yes, indeed. In the first place the Keftian people’s movement has arisen because of a war, and the war has arisen because of a corrupt autocracy in Abouti. In the second place the reason why provision has not been made for these refugees is because of a certain slowness to react and cumbersome bureaucracy from the UN, but also—and essentially—because of the slow responses of governments. The reason why food is not in place, actually, is because our government, and the French didn’t send what they were supposed to send when they said they would.”
Kate Fortune was looking very intently at the nail on her index finger. She bent it towards her and starting picking at it with her thumb. Julian was starting to play with his electronic organizer. Eamonn was not one of the world’s great orators.
“If you look beyond that,” Eamonn continued, “if Nambula wasn’t saddled with a massive foreign debt, because of the loans made by the World Bank during the oil boom in the seventies, then they wouldn’t be using all their fertile land to grow cash crops and would have more than enough food to deal with their own refugee crises.”
“Well, that should be easy enough to put across entertainingly in half an hour,” said Rajiv.
“Oh, but listen, everyone. Don’t you think, really, for all that, it’s the children who really get through to people?” said Kate Fortune. “I don’t think we want to get all bogged down in politics, do we? It’s the children we should be thinking about.”
“Stupid woman,” muttered Barry.
“Honey, what about Elizabethan-style playlets?” cried Vicky Spankie, looking at Oliver with sparkling eyes. “The roots of famine personified—War, Debt, Bad Governance!!”
This hugely amused Barry.
“Lo! I am Bad Governance! Begotten of a fat greedy despot in a gold-plated Roller,” he thundered, in that famous overenunciated delivery.
“Lo! I am Incompetence—” Dinsdale began.
Kate Fortune got to her feet, blinking back tears. “I’m sorry. I really don’t think we should be making jokes when . . . when children are dying.”
“All right. Yes, let’s all settle down,” said Oliver, glancing at Vicky, who was looking red-faced and furious.
Bill Bonham piped up, “What about trying to do something more with what’s preoccupying the world at present, linking the whole thing with a spiritual karmic quest? Doing good, feeling good about yourself. It could be presented as more of a journey.”
“Yes, thank you, Bill,” said Oliver, adding under his breath, “Any more completely lunatic suggestions while we’re at it?”
“I have to say I don’t think we should be doing this at all, actually,” said Corinna.
There was silence.
“I really think it’s, like, counterproductive,” she went on. “This is a Tory cock-up and then we say,‘Oh, it’s OK, guys, we’ll fill up the gaps, no sweat, you know.’ I mean, puh-lease.”
“And, of course, we’re only giving the illusion of filling the gaps, aren’t we?” said Oliver. “Aren’t we talking drops in the ocean?”
“It is true that the total amounts raised by Live Aid and Band Aid was less than five percent of the government overseas aid budget for that year,” said Eamonn Salt.
Everyone stared at him, taking it in.
“But Live Aid did a lot of good, didn’t it?” said Julian, looking hurt.
“Yeah,” said Dave Rufford expansively.
“Of course, Live Aid was a tremendous help,” said Edwina Roper. “It completely changed the face of giving. It was tremendous fun. It opened up a new sector of young donors which didn’t exist before. It did tremendous things for all the agencies.”
“Yeah. It was like this rebellion. We were telling the Tories, ‘Look, cunts, we’re not ’avin this,’” said Dave.
“Oh, yes, it had its moment”— Corinna was yawning through her nose— “but the moment has passed. Now every two-bit model in the business is gushing around the world doing photo shoots with the starving. It’s gross. I mean, it’s cultural imperialism at its absolute worst. It’s, like, we the celebs save the little monkeys, you know. Self-congratulatory crap.”
A crestfallen air fell on the table.
“Yeah, that’s right, actually,” said Rajiv. “I’m with Corinna on this. I’m having no part of i
t.”
“So you think there’s no point?” said Julian, dismayed.
“Well. It’s something we do have to consider,” said Oliver. “All this ‘Make way, let me help, I’m famous.’ Maybe it is irresponsible.” He looked almost relieved. I couldn’t believe this. It had all been there and now it was slipping away.
“It’s, like, crap. It’s like a false reassurance for the public,” said Rajiv.
“Exactly,” said Corinna, looking smug. “Why isn’t that ship there? Whose cock-up is this? This is what we ought to be asking, not demanding fivers from pensioners.”
“Right. Robbin’ the poor to bail out the cunts,” said Dave Rufford.
“Well, quite,” said Corinna. “I mean puh-lease.”
“Absolutely crazy!” said Barry, rising to his feet and thumping his hand down on the table. “Have you all completely taken leave of your senses?” He stood motionless, staring around the room with one eyebrow raised. “Have you gone mad? A camp,” he said, raising one hand in the air, and staring ahead, “a camp in darkest Africa, thronging with people, starving to death. They ask us for help. . .”—his voice dropped to a whisper— “and we say no? If you stood before a dying child and he held out his hand, and asked you for food, which you had, would you say no?”
He paused, turning his head from one side to the other, glaring round the room. “Well, let’s bloody well get on with it then,” he roared.
“But this is exactly what I’m saying,” said Kate Fortune. “It’s the children—”
“Oh, puh-lease,” muttered Corinna. “I mean, that’s just propagating the neocolonialist—”
Dinsdale jumped to his feet. “First word of sense I’ve heard from the old fool in fifty years,” he bellowed. “Of course we must do what we can, my darlings, what can you be thinking of? We must help! We must thrrrow ourselves to the fore!”
“Yeah, I’m with you on that, Dinsdale. No point being bleedin’ right-on about it when the poor fuckers are starvin’ to death,” said Dave Rufford.
“Yeah.”
“Absolutely.”
“I agree,” said Julian. “I’d love to do something. Oh, blast.” His phone had started ringing again.
It was plain sailing after that. Oliver was growing more and more ambitious. He was talking about doing a satellite broadcast from the camp. He was being absolutely wonderful. Even Corinna was beginning to come round.
Kate Fortune rose fussily to her feet. “Well, I’d like to say here and now that I would be more than happy to go out to Nambula.”
Barry’s head crashed down onto the table.
“We can discuss who’s going to go out later,” said Oliver. “What about the main show? We can have a few people’s party pieces and monologues, but we need something central and theatrical.”
“Shakespeare,” said Barry. “It should be the Bard.”
“What about a Shakespeare sketch?” said Julian. “A comic one.”
“Like it,” said Oliver. “Maybe speeded-up Shakespeare. A fifteen-minute Hamlet? Obviously we’d have to have other things around it, but that could form the core.”
“I’d love to do my Ophelia,” said Vicky.
“Oh, yes! So would I,” said Kate.
“Surely you’re more of a Gertrude, darling,” someone murmured.
On it went. I didn’t care. It was all going to happen now, that was what mattered. And the thought crossed my mind that if Muhammad and the representatives of RESOK found themselves in the Famous Club they would be just as bad. The Keftian tent moving, the political engineering was all part of the same thing. The Keftians wanted not to be hungry, not to be sick so that they could live, improve their lot and their status, and show off, indulge in life’s little vanities like everyone else.
“So”—Oliver closed his large matte-black notebook and banged his hand on top of it— “thank you, everyone. We meet again here, at the same time, next week, by which time we will have a running order and scripts on the way.”
“Hang on. Who’s doing the casting?” said Liam Doyle.
“Me,” said Oliver. “Thanks very much, everyone, meeting adjourned.”
Under the table Oliver slipped his hand onto my knee. I lifted it and put it back on his own.
Immediately afterwards, he cleared his throat and said, “By the way, before we all get too excited remember this all has to be cleared by Vernon Briggs or we can’t go ahead. And this is a man who thinks Hamlet is a small cigar, and a comic sketch means a mother-in-law, a banana skin and three racial stereotypes. We’ll keep you posted, anyway. Thanks very much, everyone.”
Now why did he cast a dampener like that, just when we were all fired up?
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
Things were beginning to happen at CDT. Oliver had found us a spare office four doors down from him. A PA and researcher, drafted from the Soft Focus team, came in and made phone calls from time to time. It was my job to sort out sponsorship for the flights, liaise with SUSTAIN and produce fact sheets for the celebrities. I turned up every day to find the room slowly filling up with the stuff of television production, charts and files and bits of paper, but there was a diffident air. The day after that first big meeting Oliver was curiously unavailable. He put his head round the door once but he was too busy to talk. We had two weeks left.
The days were painless enough, crowded and straining with tasks and people, but I dreaded the darkness, when the stars were the same stars they were seeing over the camp. I’d hated it getting dark ever since the explosion in Kefti. Whenever I thought about that, it was like hitting a new bruise. Bad chemicals rushed through me and took a long time to seep away. At night I lay awake, seeing Sefila. There was still no contact with the camp. Maybe messages had been sent, lying in a pouch on the backseat of a Land Rover, pushed under a pile on Malcolm’s desk. The silence meant nothing. Horrors could grow secretly in those inaccessible places, then burst on the world fully formed, as if they had grown overnight.
Every morning I rushed to the newsagents, and scanned the papers. Always there was nothing. I had spent two hours with Oliver’s contact on the News. She seemed keen. I had told her about the Kefti crisis and about what I was hoping to do with the fund-raising, and she’d rung me back about it later in the day, but after all that nothing had appeared. No news was coming out of Nambula. It made me nervous. Sometimes it made me wonder if I was going mad and had imagined it all.
The next day there was a tiny piece in the News in Brief column in one of the broadsheets.
NAMBULA REFUGEE CRISIS
Relief workers in Eastern Nambula are reporting threats of an influx of over 10,000 refugees displaced by civil war and locust plague from Kefti, a rebel province of Abouti. Workers say that relief supplies are inadequate and warn of a disaster on the scale of the 1985 famine.
The day after, there was a two-column piece on the foreign news pages of The Times under the byline of a correspondent in El Daman. He put the numbers on the move at twenty thousand and quoted nonspecific “aid workers” as saying food supplies in the camps would run out in two weeks. There was a slightly pointless quote from me, followed by the fact that I had resigned from SUSTAIN because I was frustrated with the inactivity. There was a quote from the government in El Daman giving the usual line about Nambula not having enough food to feed its own people let alone anyone else’s. Then there was a statement from the UN.
“Reports of a movement of displaced people from the highland areas of Kefti towards the Nambulan border are impossible to verify at this time because of the instability of the region.” A UN source spoke today of a “heads-in-the-sand” attitude amongst officials and bungling bureaucracy.
Maybe this would provide some momentum. I rushed into the office with a new confidence. No one was around. I called Oliver to tell him but Gwen informed me he was in conference all morning and would talk that afternoon.
The phone rang. It was Eamonn Salt.
“Have you seen The Times?” I sa
id, excitedly.
“Yes indeed. Doesn’t reflect too well on SUSTAIN, does it?”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“They mention that you resigned from your job and there’s no quote from us.”
“But I told you I’d been to The Times and the News when I first got back. Did you call them?”
Silence.
“What’s the problem?”
“I think we should get the press side of things sorted out. We need a proper press launch. Can we talk to Oliver about it?”
“He’s busy this morning, shall I fix a meeting?”
“Yes, indeed. And in the meantime I think it’s best if you call all the celebrities and make sure no one shoots their mouths off till we’ve worked out the policy.”
I rang round all the numbers I had, some of them agents, some of them answerphones, asking everyone not to talk to the press, so as not to steal the thunder before the big launch.
I spent the rest of the day working on the fact sheets, and talking to Circle Line about the airlift and the sponsorship deal. It was all going well on that front. If we gave them assurances about coverage and got hold of the first consignment of food, they would have a flight ready to go in a fortnight.
But still the Soft Focus staff drifted in and out, oddly aimlessly, and no one seemed on the case. Everything seemed on hold.
At five o’clock Oliver rang.
“Hi, can you come in for a moment?”
He was leaning back on the L-shaped leather sofa with his arms behind his head. He wasn’t wearing a jacket.
“Come in, have a seat.”
I sat down on the other leg of the L, and handed him The Times report.
“Great, isn’t it?” I said, as he read.
“Well, it’s not great for the refugees,” he said, and handed it back to me.
There was a knock at the door and Gwen appeared with two cups of tea.
“You can go if you like, Gwen,” he said. “Isn’t it your French conversation tonight?”
“Super, thanks,” she said lovingly.
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