Finally on day four in the office, his call came, in a manner of speaking.
It was an irritatingly kindly female voice.
“Hello, is that Rosie Richardson?”
“Yes.”
“Hel-lo, Rosie. This is Oliver Marchant’s assistant, Gwen.”
His assistant? Why his assistant? Within seconds I was into an Oliver-in-hospital fantasy.
“Oliver was wondering if you were free tonight.”
“Yes.” There was a delicious, tempting rush in my stomach.
“Good. He was wondering if you would like to come to the Broadcasting Society Awards at the Grosvenor House tonight.”
“Yes, that would be—”
“Super. Black tie six-thirty for seven. Oliver will pick you up at six-thirty. Could you let me have your address, Rosie?”
This style of romantic follow-up to a sexual encounter is the kind of thing crushes allow you to put up with, which is why they are monstrous afflictions to be fled from like vengeful beasts.
We were seated at a round table in a vast hotel ballroom. Above us, four gigantic chandeliers twinkled down on the mass of bare shoulders, sequins and cummerbunds, the TV lights, the giant screens, and the production staff scurrying round holding yellow scripts, looking self-important, verging on hysterical. The proceedings had not yet begun. Everything was already running late. Onstage a troupe of sparkling dancers were practicing, rushing at the audience doing starburst jumps, then turning and high-kicking off in the opposite direction, heads still turned towards us over their shoulders with air-hostess smiles.
On my right was Vernon Briggs, a portly man with a broad Yorkshire accent. He was an executive at Channel Four, the company televising the awards ceremony. On my left was Corinna Borghese, Oliver’s co-presenter on Soft Focus. Corinna’s thin dark-red lips were pressed together with visible high pressure. Her pale face under its sunglasses and spiky hennaed crop was trembling like the steel ropes of a suspension bridge. Soft Focus had been nominated for an award and Corinna, to Vernon’s disgust, was insisting she go up and collect it with Oliver.
“The point is, I have as much creative input as he does. I ought to have a producer credit anyway, but the point is if he goes up there on his own for it then it’s like Oliver Marchant is the face of Soft Focus, right? And I simply don’t think that’s representative.”
“Listen, love, shall I tell you what you do in your job? You sit on your little arse in front of the autocue and you read out what it says.” Vernon was leaning towards her with his enormous red face and bulging eyes, wagging a finger. “Reading out loud, that’s what you do. Like in school. Oliver is the editor of the program.”
“Oliver has a penis is what you mean, right, and I will not be addressed as love,” she managed to get out from between the clamped lips.
I was having a lot of trouble keeping my dress under the table. It was part of a converted bridesmaid’s dress, silk with a springy, sticky-outy skirt. Once, the dress had been long and peach and worthy of Kate Fortune, but I had had it dyed and altered so that now it was short and black. I had suffered a panic attack while getting dressed. When the doorbell rang I was standing on the bed, trying to see myself full-length in the mirror, wearing a black lycra miniskirt over a swimsuit. At that precise moment, and at that precise moment only, the bridesmaid’s dress seemed a good idea. I realized later that one must never, ever go anywhere looking even faintly reminiscent of a shepherdess, even a shepherdess who has just been in a coal hole. The skirt misbehaved continually, springing about in an unmanageable manner. It was now protruding on either side of me, and interfering with the knees not only of Corinna Borghese but also Vernon Briggs, who had now turned his back on both of us.
“Sorry about this,” I whispered conspiratorially to Corinna. “I wish I hadn’t worn this stupid frock. I tried on about eight things before I came out and panicked. Do you do that?”
“Actually no,” said Corinna. “I try to keep my clothes simple.”
Dinsdale, who was sitting across the table, gave me a sympathetic look and offered me a cigarette, which I took, though I did not usually smoke.
“Please do not smoke next to me,” said Corinna.
The evening had not started well. Oliver had not arrived to meet me. Instead he had sent a driver in a hat, who told me that Oliver was running late in the studio and would meet me at the Grosvenor House. I had twenty minutes of horror in the celebrity-stuffed foyer. People were staring at me, but I knew it was with pity because of the insane dress. It was Dinsdale who rescued me again. When he caught hold of my arm I had been to the ladies’ twice, stared at the seating plan for eight minutes, pretending it took that long to find “Oliver Marchant and Guest.” Only then did it occur to me that Oliver must have known he needed a date for this occasion weeks ago. Could it be that I was a last-minute fill-in? Had some other girl dropped out? Some beautiful, accomplished critic perhaps, an authority on the death of Essentialism in the Mittel-European novel, with a bottom like two snooker balls.
An old stand-up comic, Jimmy Horsham, had started talking to me and wouldn’t go away. The fact that he had a room in the Grosvenor House for the night had already come up several times. When Dinsdale appeared he slunk off sheepishly.
“My darling, my darling. Whatever are you doing with that filthy old bore? Whatever can he be thinking of? Preposterous idea. Come along, come along. Let’s go and nibble at the canapés. I’m trying to avoid Barry,” he whispered confidentially. Barry Rhys was another theatrical legend, and Dinsdale’s best friend. “He’s got that absolute sea elephant of a wife with him. Who are you here with? Is it that dirty old devil Ginsberg?”
“No. I’m with Oliver Marchant,” I said, happily.
“But wherever is he, my darling? Why has he left you here to be prrrrryed on?” Dinsdale stared at me ferociously, his brows almost covering his eyes in consternation.
“He’s late in the studio.”
“No, my darling. No no no. He is over there, look,” said Dinsdale, concern oozing from every facial feature.
I felt a stab of hurt. There was Oliver, dark-suited and tieless, sharing a joke with Corinna Borghese—well, telling a joke more like. He was leaning over her, waving a hand expressively. Corinna was staring straight ahead, with an indulgent half-smile playing on her lips. Dinsdale caught hold of my hand and started pulling me along towards them.
“There he is, my darling. Come along. We’ll soon have you sorted out.” I felt like a child whose parent hadn’t turned up at school to pick her up.
Oliver looked startled for a second when he saw me. “Rosie. Hi, how are you? I was looking for you.” He smiled, and bent to kiss me. The scent of him brought heady thoughts of the night of passion, but Oliver gave no sign that he remembered. “Do you know Corinna Borghese?” he said.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. I was getting the hang of Famous Club introductions now.
“Thank you,” said Corinna.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“So how are you?” said Oliver.
“I’m fine, how are you?”
“Fine.”
That was about the level of it.
An hour later everyone was seated for dinner and I was praying Oliver wouldn’t look across at me and see that I was failing to talk to anyone. He looked across at me, and saw that I was failing to talk to anyone. I tried to smile but it was a most unnatural smile. It felt like the smile of a devil child, with bits of bread roll in the teeth and yellow eyes.
“You OK?” he mouthed. I nodded gaily, and decided I’d better have another go with Corinna.
“Well, this looks nice,” I said brightly, looking at the menu. It offered Gravlax, Chicken in Its White Wine and Cream Sauce with Its Ravioli, or Fresh Tuna Steak with Pommes Parmentière, followed by White Chocolate Mousse in Its Sugar Cage.
“Pommes Parmentière—I suppose that means instant mashed potato,” I said.
“This is utterly ridiculous,” said Corinna
.
I thought she meant having to sit next to me.
“A vegetarian cannot eat this meal. Where is the waiter?”
“Do you not eat fish?” I said. “There’s tuna.”
“Tuna?” she said with venom, looking at me incredulously. “You do know what happens when they catch tuna, don’t you? You’ve heard about the dolphins?”
Our conversation did not improve. It was a relief when, as the last of the Sugar Cages were being cleared away, the big TV lights snapped on. The assembled celebrities rustled, swelled and settled themselves like a flock of pigeons. I was thrilled. I had watched these occasions so often at home on the television, and now I was here. There were trumpets, there was a shouty announcement, more trumpets, and a short fat floor manager, wearing an earpiece and a lot of electrical equipment strapped to his bottom, started clapping his hands bossily in the air while bending his chin onto his chest and talking into a microphone. Everyone applauded obediently. Noel Edmonds strode onto the platform and stood behind a lectern, motioning us to stop clapping.
Meanwhile a thin dark young man with glasses had come up to Corinna.
“Hi. How are you?” he said in a low, confidential voice, kissing her, his eyes darting around the room.
“. . . is someone who has been delighting audiences on both sides of the Atlantic for many years . . .” went Noel Edmonds.
“Dire, isn’t it? Have you spoken to Michael? Howard’s over there. Jonathan’s going to get it. Definitely. Just going to talk to Jean-Paul about his intro.”
“I’ll come with you. I’m not staying here if he’s going to go up and get it. Blatantly sexist,” said Corinna, and stood up and left.
The applause was just beginning to die down after the director’s acceptance speech for the Best Drama.
“Great. Fucking great,” muttered Bill Bonham. “He thanks the writers, he thanks the lighting cameraman, he thanks his fucking wife, and then, only then, he thinks of mentioning me. Great. I only played the fucking lead. I mean, great. Thanks.”
The Lord taketh away even as he giveth. Our table of resentment seethed and sizzled with those blessed, as if by a laying on of hands, with riches and fame, yet blighted by bitterness at those who got a bigger share.
Onstage, Vicky Spankie, a young RSC actress, was accepting her Best Actress Award. She was slight, extremely pretty, with dark hair cut in a bob, and was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. She had recently been all over the tabloids after her marriage to a rain forest Indian.
“You give, and you give, and you give, and you give, and all the time this terrible fear is eating away at you, and you want to shout, ‘Look, I am human. I am afraid,’” she was explaining.
“Oh, puh-lease,” said Corinna, who had decided to come back, and had maneuvered herself into the seat next to Oliver.
Vicky Spankie was still going on.
“I wonder if something really kind of spiritual could happen here? Where we could all think for a moment and send some kind of waves of love and sanity out to the Brazilian government, who are allowing, every single day, thousands of acres of forest to be cut.”
On the big screen above her, which showed the live TV output, the shot cut to the husband, Rani, back at the table looking bewildered. Instead of tribal robes now, he was wearing black tie, but he still had the disk in his bottom lip. In the interview I’d read, the reporter had asked Vicky if Rani took the disk out at night, which had not gone down at all well.
“Come on up, Rani, this is for you too,” she was saying. The bemused Rani was being pushed towards the stage, helped up the steps by a young lovely in a glittery sheath. Then everyone was getting to their feet, giving Rani a standing ovation.
Vernon Briggs had grabbed the fat floor manager’s microphone and was talking into it in a low furious voice. “Get her to shut up,” he was saying. “Marcus, get the Indian off the stage and get her to shut up now. Get the stupid tart to shut up. We are one hour and forty minutes over, Marcus. Get the Indian off the stage now.”
Just then the cameraman came to our table and started to focus on Oliver, which meant that Best Arts Program was coming up. Corinna leaned towards him into the shot. For a fleeting second, I saw him look furious, then he started talking to Corinna in a low voice. Corinna was biting one side of her bottom lip and kept looking up at the camera.
The image on the big screen cut to the Best Arts Program logo. Vicky Spankie’s microphone was cut, and a girl holding a script hurried over to her, ushering her and Rani apologetically off the stage. Vicky put her head in the air, and swept towards the exit, with Rani following her, clutching the award and beaming, as far as it was possible with the disk in his lip. As she passed our table, he caught her arm. “Oh, sod off, you stupid fuckbrain,” I heard her mutter under her breath.
Oliver and Corinna were tense. The last of the clips from the four nominations was running. Kevin Garside, a folk singer with a skinhead cut, was performing miners’ protest songs. They were his own compositions performed to his own tambourine accompaniment. He was being watched by a group of Guatemalan peasants in a hut, wearing expressions of polite embarrassment.
The red light came on from the camera opposite Oliver. Onstage, Ian McKellen was opening the envelope. The screen was divided in quarters. In one of them was Oliver with a relaxed smile, and Corinna still biting her lip.
“And the winner of Best Arts Program is Sof—”
On the screen I saw Corinna breaking into a smile, and just beginning to rise from her seat.
“—Sofama Kuwayo for The Dispossessed, a Lament.”
Oliver’s smile stayed till the light behind the camera clicked off.
Onstage, Sofama Kuwayo had taken his award and was finishing his speech: “. . . in your Audis, your Mercs, your BMWs, spare a thought for those, many of them younger than your own kids, without homes to go to. It’s their words, their experience, the poetry of their lives which created that program. This award is for them.”
“Well, you made a prat of yourself there, Corinna, didn’t you?” said Oliver.
About half an hour later we were making our way to Pizza on the Piazza in a little group made up of a studiedly modest Bill Bonham, Corinna and someone called Rats, who was apparently the bass player in the group EX Gap, a still-tearful Vicky Spankie, minus Rani, a comedian called Hughie Harrington-Ellis, and lastly Oliver, with his arm around me.
“Oy, Hughie,” a group of boys yelled from a traffic island, “absobloodylootely.” This was one of Hughie’s many catch phrases. “Absobloodylutely,” went the boys. Hughie gave them a gritted-teeth smile and a wave.
“This must happen to you all the time,” I said.
“Oh, no,” said Hughie dryly. “First time it’s ever happened to me.”
In the restaurant everyone turned to stare. All the tables were full, but the management somehow managed to move some kids and make them split up and share on three other tables. Within minutes we were all sitting together at their table with the waiters flapping around us.
“Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. It must happen to you all the time. You don’t mind, mate, do you?” said a young boy, shoving a bit of paper under Hughie’s nose.
“Of course I don’t,” said Hughie, adding under his breath, “you little tit.”
Vicky was signing a photograph, which she just happened to have in her handbag, for the waiter.
A girl came up to Bill Bonham. “I’m sorry, would you mind? This must happen to you all the time.”
I was praying for someone to come and ask Oliver, because I could feel him descending into gloom again. Then, thank God, another pair of girls appeared and asked Oliver to sign their menu. “Sorry, you’ll have to get used to this,” said Oliver smiling smugly.
There was a commotion at the door and Terence Twinkle burst in. “Hi, everyone,” he shouted across to our table. “God, it’s a nightmare out there. Why can’t anyone leave me alone?” He was wearing a floor-length white mink coat.
CHAPTE
R
Six
It was twelve-thirty when we turned the jeep into the gates of the compound. Malcolm’s Land Cruiser was already there, plastered in stickers. A small procession was making its way towards the latrine unit. The procession was headed by Betty, dressed in pink, who was gesturing and laughing beneficently as if hosting a royal visit. Our team had all changed into their best clothes—ludicrously garish pantomime outfits: dresses, shirts and harem pants with brightly colored spots and stripes, run up by the tailors in the camp. Malcolm was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a hat, which looked as though it had something stupid written on it. And next to him, looking away from Betty and across to the camp, was the new doctor, who was of medium height and dressed in dull colors.
At the sound of our vehicle the whole procession slowly turned round and stared accusingly. Sian appeared from the cabana as we climbed out. “I told them there was probably a bit of a crisis down at the hospital,” she said conspiratorially. “I think they’re all fine only, well, Betty . . .”
There then followed a rather awkward moment as Henry, Sian and I walked across to the latrine procession, with no one quite knowing what to do except smile fixedly. Fortunately, Henry’s breeding carried us through. “Malcolm, dear boy!” he started bellowing as we approached. “Great to see you! Hi! You must be the new doctor, great to see you, great! Great to have some more old buggers around the place to dilute the totty.”
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