The artists were sitting around happily on sofas, tucking into smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, cappuccinos and Buck’s Fizz, reading the papers. A little group was gathered around the cast list for the speeded-up Hamlet, laughing and giggling. Corinna was staring furiously at a row of stags’ heads, which were all wearing sunglasses. Oliver was striding around, telling people off like a schoolmaster, then staring madly at his script. The Oliver Marchant as saintly savior concept seemed rather to have gone to his head. Dave Rufford was playing with a remote control switch, making the gilt-framed old masters, decorated with false mustaches, sink back into the walls. Wood panels whirred up and down as he pressed his buttons. I watched as Oliver shouted instructions to a PA, walking straight into five-year-old Max Rufford, who was driving a miniature Aston Martin, with a full petrol-fired engine, over the polished wood floor.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What is this? We are trying to raise money for the starving.”
One of the Soft Focus PAs handed me an envelope. “This fax came for you from SUSTAIN.”
It was a copy of a telex from Henry. It was the first word I’d had from Safila since I left.
HOPE ALL GOING WELL WITH APPEAL. NEED IT, CAN TELL YOU. ARRIVALS STILL COMING. NO MOVE FROM UNHCR. STILL NO SHIP. NO MED. SUPPLIES FROM ANDRE. RESOK PANICKING RE: MAJOR LOCUST EXODUS. DAILY DEATHS CLIMBING TO DOUBLE FIGURES. BRACING OURSELVES. NOTHING HERE FOR THEM WHEN FLOODGATES OPEN.
COUNTING ON YOU, OLD GIRL. HENRY.
I had never had such a terse message from Henry. I looked at the date. It was sent from El Daman five days ago. It must be at least a week old. Maybe more. I tried to imagine what was going on out there now. I looked anxiously round the room.
“Darling boy! We have a disaster on our hands.” Dinsdale was gesturing dramatically up at the cast list. “Exquisitely cast. A per-fection of a casting. But where? Where is the ghost?”
Oliver looked up, distractedly.
Dinsdale’s brow furrowed. “I shall step in. Do not fret, dear boy. I shall rise to the occasion and brrrrrridge the gap. I, Dinsdale, shall be the ghost! It will be the performance of my career.”
“You’re supposed to be bloody Claudius, you fool. You can’t play the bloody ghost and the murderer of the bloody ghost. Absolutely bloody crazy,” bellowed Barry.
“That’s fine. Good idea. Family likeness,” said Oliver, returning to his script.
“Absolutely crazy,” said Barry.
“Oh, shut up, you fearsome old spoilsport. Just because I have two parts and you merely have the one.”
“Oliver, could I have a word. I’m sorry, I’m just not happy about playing a woman of this age. I mean, I’ve gone, love. I’m sorry, I’ve just gone.”
“One minute, Kate. Come on, everyone. Read through, please, pull up some chairs in a circle.”
Everyone carried on talking.
“Where’s Julian?” said Oliver, bearing down on me, looking at his watch.
“He must be on his way. I’ve tried his car phone, and it’s engaged.”
“If he was being paid for this, he’d be here on the bloody dot. It’s charity, so he’s late. Try him again.”
“Look, I don’t want to be fockin’ queenie but my character wouldn’t say this line,” said Liam Doyle, hurrying after him. “It’s not right.”
“Shut up, please, Liam.”
“I’ve just had a call from Jerry Jones about Natalie D’Arby,” said Dave Rufford’s wife, Nikki. “He said he spoke to you and you thought there might be a part for her.”
“A part in her was what I said.”
“I am so furious,” said Kate at me, looking resentfully at Oliver. “This is some scheme of Vicky Spankie’s to force me into playing a woman twice my age.”
“I’m sure Hamlet’s mother was very young,” I said. “They used to have children before puberty in those days.”
“Did they? Did they really?”
“Max. Outside,” said Nikki as her son narrowly missed her leg in his car.
“Leave the little bleeder alone.’E’s not doin’ any ’arm,” said Dave.
“Will everyone please pull up a chair, and let’s make a start,” shouted Oliver. “It’s like trying to plot Aïda with a flock of sheep.”
I was leaning on the piano, going through the mail which had come in since the press launch on Thursday. It made the Evening Standard, the BBC and ITN news and most of the papers the next morning. By Saturday there was a sack of letters waiting in the office. The response was extraordinary: pound coins taped to drawings from eight-year-olds, twenty-pound notes from pensioners. Dinsdale, Barry, Julian, Oliver and Nikki had all discreetly made out large checks that morning. We would probably have nearly enough to pay for the first planeload of food before we set off.
The process of getting everyone on chairs in a circle was not moving so quickly. Scripts had been unaccountably mislaid or fallen into the wrong hands, spectacles had to be retrieved from cars, glasses of water fetched, lavatories visited, nannies telephoned. Oliver was standing amid the mayhem shouting, “Come ON, everyone, please. Where is Dinsdale?”
Barry’s voice reverberated round the great hall, making mincemeat of the acoustic panels. “‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us!’” he bellowed. He was staring aghast at the minstrels’ gallery where Dinsdale was entering wearing a sheet and a pair of halfmoon spectacles.
“‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d?’” roared Barry.
Dinsdale started to remove the sheet and spectacles peevishly from his head. “How dare you steal my thunder, you frightful old tart? Fiendishly mean of you on my first entrance. Absolutely fiendish. Shan’t forgive you. Never speak another word to you as long as I live.”
“‘Oh, earth! What else? O, fie! Hold, hold my heart.’” Barry was clutching at his chest and stumbling dramatically. Everyone was laughing.
“This whole thing is turning into a farce,” shouted Oliver. “Stop this now.”
They stared.
“I think we should all have better judgment than to act around like schoolchildren when lives are depending on us.”
There was silence.
“Yes. You see? I think we should all remember why we’re doing this,” he said primly.
I was waiting for him to add, “It’s not funny, it’s not clever, it’s just silly,” but he just walked furiously back to his chair and sat down, drumming his fingers on his script.
I rubbed my forehead with the back of my arm, worrying. I decided to get on with my sack of letters, and try not to think too hard.
“Are you all right, m’dear? You look exhausted. Have you had some breakfast?” Nikki Rufford came and leaned next to me on the piano. I was going through the press clippings now, ready to photocopy them for the celebrities. “Oh dear, I do wish Dave wouldn’t do this,” she said, looking up at the false mustache and beard on the Holbein above her.
“You must be done in yourself, after the rain forest do. It’s very good of you to have everyone here.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Dave loves all this.” She laughed affectionately. “He’s so excited about being a gravedigger.”
We looked over at them plotting the sketch in the background. It was extraordinary how quickly it had come together, once they got going.
“Halas, poor Yorick. I knew him well! Don’t break off, playmates. Don’t break off. Just come to inspect the troops. Carry on. Have I missed To Be or Not to Be?”
The rehearsal ground to a halt as Vernon Briggs strutted into the great hall shouting, “Carry on. Don’t mind me. You carry on, lads.”
He started waddling towards Nikki and me. “Ladies! Ladies! Hello, my loves. Nice to see you, to see you . . .”
“Nice,” we muttered foolishly as he arrived.
“Load of bloody old bollocks, this, isn’t it?” he said too loudly, jerking his head backwards at the actors. “Don’t you worry, my love,” he reached out and patted my bottom. “I’ll see the kiddies right. I’ll get it sor
ted out with some decent names. Tarby. That’s who we need. Someone with a bit of heart. We’re not having old Michelangelo Marchant getting bossy-side-out in Africa either, lecturing everyone on the siege of bloody Omdurman. Now, I’m not here for long. I want to be at Newbury for the four-fifteen. I want all this lot that’s coming out to Africa gathered for a little talk. Get ’em to frame themselves, will you, love?”
Corinna, Julian and Kate were glancing nervously from Oliver to Vernon. This was the celebrity combination which was to take on the dark continent in the name of Charitable Acts. It was perhaps not the ideal choice, given Corinna’s antineocolonialist fervor, Julian’s emotional state and Kate’s confidence in baby-hugging as an infallible route to world peace, but with two weeks’ notice it was the best we could get. At least Julian’s portable phone wouldn’t work in Safila.
“So my intention is that we provide an introduction and three main inserts, each presented by a different one of us in a different area of the camp, the feeding center, the hospital and outside one of the huts,” Oliver was saying. “They can all be cabled. We talk to the refugees, we try to explore their sensibilities in relation to Western aid, and their perceptions of the roots of the poverty and the north/south divide and—”
“Yeah, you do that, lad, if you can keep yerself from nodding off. I’ll be pointing a camera at Kate Fortune holding those kiddies with a bit of music in the background and the phone numbers running underneath. ‘When a Child Is Born’ that’s what we want.”
Julian, Oliver and Corinna all started to speak.
“But—”
“I really must—”
“I absolutely cannot—”
Only Kate was beaming fondly at Vernon.
He ploughed on. “Now, lad, who’s looking after the show in London while we’re away?”
“Er, I’m going to record the Hamlet and the special performances this Wednesday, and Marcus Miles will direct the live links on the day.”
“What? You think you’re gonna have this load of bollocks in shape by Wednesday, do yer? Rather you than me, mate. Anyway. The dish is on its way. What’s happening with the flights? We’ve got the food, have we? When’s that cargo plane going?”
“It’s leaving on Friday morning with the food and the camera crew,” I said.
“All free?”
“We have to reimburse the cost of the food out of the appeal and Circle Line are giving us the first flight for nothing, provided we give them a credit.”
“And we’re flying out Saturday?”
“Yes, two P.M. Heathrow.”
“Everyone jabbed up, all got your kit, have you?”
“Oh, Rosie, I was going to ask,” said Julian. “Do we have to take the water bottles that you’ve bought for us? Because, you see, I’ve found this one with a leather holder that you can fasten to your belt. And it holds the same amount.”
“Have you got those fact sheets ready yet?” said Corinna. “I want to know what I’m talking about.”
“You’ll have them by the end of today.”
“There will be somewhere to plug in my hair dryer in the camp?” said Kate.
“Was it the pills in the white jar we were supposed to take every day?”
“Which airline are we flying?” said Oliver.
“Nambulan Airways.”
“Are they, I mean, are they all right?” said Julian.
“Eh oop, ‘Fly me hi-gh, on a coconut air-way,’” sang Vernon.
I bit the side of my thumb. I wasn’t sure whether they, or Safila, knew what they were in for.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
If we crash, can I eat you?” asked Oliver.
It was Saturday and the Nambulan Airways jet had heaved itself into the air only five and a half hours after the scheduled takeoff time. A range of unnatural engine sounds was making the cabin shudder, and a high tinnitus whine, which the stewardess had announced would cease after takeoff, was surprising no one by failing to cease.
A shot of our plane appeared on the video screens now, only to plunge to the bottom of the screen with the rest of the shot, followed by a flickering white line and a new shot of a glamorous waterskiing man, dark hair blowing back in the wind, taking one hand off the rope to wave and smile at the camera. The shot widened to reveal the water skier skimming past the mudflats of the river in central El Daman. He was balancing on one leg now, with the tiny figures of basking crocodiles just recognizable in the background. For a moment I was mesmerized by this vision of Nambula as a playboy’s hot spot, until the water skier suffered the same fate as the plane, to be replaced by the flickering white line, and, this time, a desert sunset, Ara-bic music, a nomad silhouetted on a camel, and the mountains of Sidra behind. I felt a great rush of joy at the sight. I glanced across at Kate Fortune, wondering if she was sharing my joy.
Possibly not. Kate was wearing the same pale, shocked expression she had been wearing since she entered the plane to find herself seated beside a wizened man in a very dirty djellaba, who was holding a newspaper parcel full of eggs. She was playing a complicated psychological game with him over the armrest. She took hold of the peach gabardine of her sleeve, moved it away from the once-white cotton of his sleeve, and lifted her eyes to his face, pointedly. The man looked at her, looked down at his sleeve and back at her with puzzlement. Then still looking at her, he reached into the fold of his djellaba, took out a handful of leaves and put them into his mouth.
“Excuse me.”
Julian was sandwiched between two Nambulan women who were even larger than him. They were swathed in the colorful, musk-infused robes of newlyweds.
“Excuse me.” Julian was trying to get the attention of the stewardess, who looked at him with a bored expression and stayed where she was.
The djellabaed old man was reaching into his mouth now, which was stained red, with bits of leaf protruding from his lips. He stuck his thumb and forefinger inside, took out a gobbet of chewed-up leaf, smiled endearingly, and offered the gobbet to Kate. For a moment I saw the Fortune face break into the first natural smile I had ever seen on it.
“Excuse me.”
Julian was attempting to squeeze his enormous body past one of the brides. Through a combination of climbing and squashing he managed to extract himself and made his way up to the stewardess, who, along with everyone else in the cabin, was watching him suspiciously.
“Excuse me? Is it possible to move up to first class now?” said Julian discreetly.
“No first class,” said the stewardess loudly.
“Shhh. Yes, there is, I can see it through the curtain,” said Julian, looking nervously around the cabin.
“No first class.”
“The lady we spoke to at the check-in desk, Mrs. Karar, said we could move up to first class after takeoff,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.
“You sit down.”
“We’re with the television.” Julian did an incomprehensible mime. “Me very large. First class?”
“Where is your ticket?”
Julian fumbled in his pocket. “Blast.”
A roll of twenty-dollar bills fell onto the floor. A thin man in a brown polyester jacket with a hole in the elbow bent down and gave them back to him.
“Thanks. Blast.”
Eventually he produced the ticket, and handed it to the stewardess.
“Television. We raise money for refugees,” he said, rubbing his stomach hungrily. “First class?”
The stewardess was staring at the ticket.
“Mrs. Karar . . .” Julian began again.
“This free ticket,” said the stewardess.
“Yes. That’s right. You see Nambulan Airways gave me a free ticket because we’re doing a broadcast to help Nambula, which is why Mrs. Karar said I could go into first class,” he said, bright red now.
“You are not having paid for this ticket. You sit down now.”
There was a ripple of laughter from the cabin, as Julian struggled back to hi
s seat, looking mortified.
“Excuse me.”
The stewardess lifted her chin at Oliver.
“Could you bring me a Scotch and soda?”
“No alcohol.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nambula is Moslem country. Alcohol is not allowed.”
Oliver looked at me with a gleam of pure panic in his eye.
“Have we got any Scotch with us?”
“No.”
“WHAT?”
There was a pause.
“I’ve forgotten my sunglasses,” he said.
“Oh dear,” I replied.
Another pause.
“Damn,” he said.
I sighed. “What is it now?”
“Sunblock. Forgotten it,” said Oliver.
“Just wear a hat.”
*
A docile calm had settled over the cabin, as happens in the mysterious rhythm of airline journeys. Corinna Borghese was sleeping under an eye mask which was smeared with pale-green gel. Vernon was dozing, with a half bottle of whisky openly resting on his paunch. I had seen him paying off the stewardess. Oliver was beside himself with mixed emotions, wanting some of the whisky but not wanting to admit that Vernon had been smarter than him, still going on about his sunglasses.
It was a curious bridge between the two worlds—this apparently modern jet where nothing worked anymore, odors of goat and musk wafting around Marks and Spencer’s business suits, and unfathomable objects wrapped in newspaper and string tumbling from the overhead lockers onto the heads of the passengers below. It was around this point when every item in your bag became precious and irreplaceable; when you remembered that total availability of all things at all times was not a universal state, and started to panic slightly. It was the beginning of the slippery slide away from bursting schedules, clockwatching and rush, as well as order, efficiency and logic.
I settled back, enjoying a hiccup of freedom. No phone call could reach us here. Ten hours in which to rest. The day before had been a bloody nightmare, every minute bursting with too many tasks. At five-thirty, stuck in a traffic jam in a taxi with a list of eighteen things to buy before six, I had torn a hole in my tights with my own hand.