Cause Celeb

by Helen Fielding

  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 it.”

  “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, crow
ded 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 Se-fila. 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 said, 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.

  “You doing anything tomorrow night?” he said when she had gone.

  “Why?”

  “Good. We’ll have dinner.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk.”

  “What about? Talk now.”

  He sighed, stirring his tea. “I’ve had your Eamonn Salt on the phone, talking about a press launch,” he said.

  “I know. When do you think it should be?”

  He suddenly got to his feet and strode over to the plinth. “Do you pay any attention to what I say?” he said.

  I looked at him.

  “I told you nothing was definite. We have simply been looking into an idea and that is as far as it goes. It’s most unlikely that it will work. The idea of having a press launch at this stage is ridiculous. I never told you this would go ahead.” His mouth was twitching. “I feel harassed. I feel my hand is being forced.”

  I could feel myself breaking out into a sweat. If this failed it was too late to try anything else. I couldn’t believe it. We’d held that meeting, a dozen major celebrities had agreed to take part. We had an office, we had people from Soft Focus starting to gear up. The PA was looking into having a satellite dish sent to Nambula from Nairobi. But it was in his power to stop it. I said nothing. This was how he had always been. One day he’d be talking about spending the rest of his life with me, then the next day he couldn’t even be bothered to phone.

  “So we’ll have dinner tomorrow and talk,” he said.

  He was looking at me very oddly. What was going on now? I said nothing.

  “I am asking you to have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

  I put my head down.

  “ROSIE, I AM ASKING YOU TO HAVE DINNER WITH ME.”

  Unbelievable that we could get back into this, as if it were a dance, a game of computer chess. He would do this, and I would do that and off we went. I did know what I was taking on. But surely he couldn’t behave like this with all his program commissions?

  “What exactly is the problem with the program?” I asked.

  He turned and looked at me blankly.

  “Why is it most unlikely that it will work?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Vernon Briggs.”

  “Vernon Briggs.”

  “Yes. It’s just not his bag—actors, arts, messages about debt. There’s no slack in the budget and we’re gearing up for the franchises. There’s no way he’s going to agree to this.”

  “But he must know it’s happening. You must have talked to him. What did he say?”

  “It’s not his sort of thing.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  He said nothing. A little idea popped into my head.

  “Oliver. Have you spoken to Vernon Briggs?”

  He kept his head down.

  “Oliver. I am asking you a question. Have you spoken to Vernon Briggs about Charitable Acts?”

  Silence.

  “Have you?”

  Still nothing.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the switchboard.

  “Vernon Briggs’s office, please.”

  Oliver looked at me, aghast but curiously impotent.

  “Ah. It’s Oliver Marchant’s office here. Could Oliver pop in and have a word?”

  “One moment, please.”

  I w
aited with my heart thumping. It was awful to have believed it was all going to happen and then have it whipped away.

  “Vernon can see him in ten minutes.”

  “Thank you. And Rosie Richardson will be coming too.”

  I looked at Oliver, sitting with his head down.

  “We’re both nuts, you know,” I said. “If anyone saw this they would lock us up.”

  He looked up and grinned sheepishly. “I know.”

  “Come and sit on my knee,” he said then.

  “Oh, sod off, you revolting old madman.”

  *

  Vernon Briggs heaved himself up from behind the black, gilt-edged desk and came to greet us, clapping his hands together and rubbing them.

  “Hello, playmates!” he said, in the hoarse Yorkshire voice. “Bored to tears up ’ere. Fancy a drink?”

  “No, thanks. You remember Rosie Richardson?” said Oliver.

  “Oh, lawks a’ mercy! The woman who could have been the mother of my child if she’d played her cards right. What a sight for sore eyes. You two getting back together, are you? Come to ask for Uncle Vernon’s blessing? How are you, my love?”

  Vernon Briggs had not improved with time, apart from the addition of a Bavarian-style handlebar mustache.

  “Like it?” said the program controller, fingering the waxed tip. “It’s a cunt tickler.”

  The carpet across which he was proceeding was deep pile and black, with a mock zebra-skin rug in the center. I glanced back at it quickly. I hoped it was mock zebra-skin. “Hello, son,” said Vernon, reaching up to clap Oliver on the shoulder. “Nice to see you. To see you . . . ?”

  Oliver said nothing.

  “Eh, eh. None of that, son. None of your sulky sulks. Not till you’ve done your time, come up through the ranks, shown you know your public-school arse from your Oxbridge elbow. That was a load of old cobblers you came up with the other night. Seen the ratings, have you? Two point four million! Gah! Bums on seats, boy. Bums on seats. That’s what we want, not your pseudo-intellectual twaddle.”

  On the walls were gilt-framed seventies-style prints in shades of pink and purple. They featured long-haired, long-legged girls and pink items: girls getting out of pink sports cars, girls sipping pink cocktails out of triangular glasses, girls leaning on pink cocktail bars, buttocks outlined through tight pink dresses. It was such a shame that Corinna wasn’t at the meeting.