Authors: Helen Fielding
“You're right. I've always thought it was more of a new aristocracy, but you're absolutely right. It has more open membership. It's the Famous Club. The only membership requirement is that the public know who you are,” he said, glancing disparagingly round the room.
“No, no,
you're
right, it
is
like an aristocracy,” I said eagerly. “You know, the country estates and the hunting, and it's hereditary now: Julian Lennon, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen.”
“It also inhabits every single first-class lounge and awards ceremony you ever pass through. But, actually, it
is
more like a club with its rules. You have to know the form. He who is less famous must wait to be approached by he who is more famous,” Oliver said.
At this, Lady Hilary Ginsberg, Sir William's wife, interrupted him, rather knocking down his theory. “Oliver, I'm so thrilled to see you. How is the Lorca coming along?”
Oliver looked blank just for a moment. He didn't recognize her.
“Hilary Ginsberg, so pleased you could come,” she said hastily, her back slightly turned to me, excluding me. “Have you met Martin?”
Lady Hilary was a tragic name-dropper. I had often bent with her over her dinner party celebrity lists, which were like a Dow Jones index of fame, with artists, actors, writers, journalists, moving up and down, depending on fashion, acts of God, or their own greediness for exposure. Lady Hilary seemed to have embraced this index as a yardstick for her entire life. I once heard her discuss, without irony, why a certain name was not a particularly good one to drop. Even her closest women friends would be invited to dinner parties with Sir William only when their value was up, otherwise it was lunch alone with her.
Oliver was continuing with the Famous Club theory. “You put two of them in a room full of noncelebs, they'll end up talking to each other, whether or not they've already met, providing . . . providing the more famous of the two approaches the other one first,” Oliver went on. Everyone was laughing by this time. “Come on, Martin, you're a celeb, you must know it's true.” As Oliver finished his sentence he turned his eyes to mine and kept looking.
Sir William appeared, booming behind us, startling everyone.
“Come along, come along, heavens above, we're ver', ver' late, going to miss the trumpets,” and seizing Oliver and the novelist by their elbows like an old hen, he bustled them out.
Oliver was seated behind me in the box. I spent the entire performance in a state of almost unbearable arousal. I fancied I could feel his breath on my neck and back in my low-cut dress. At one point his hand brushed my skin as if by accident. I almost died.
When the music stopped and the applause died down I daren't look at him. I stood surveying the emptying Albert Hall as everyone left the box, trying to calm down. I heard someone moving down the steps behind me. It was him. He bent and kissed the nape of my neck. At least I hoped it was him.
“I'm so sorry,” Oliver murmured, “that was just something I had to do.”
I looked round at him, trying to raise one eyebrow.
“I could murder a pizza,” he whispered urgently. “Why don't you turn into a pizza?”
“Because I don't want to be murdered.”
“I didn't mean murder . . . exactly.”
And thus the obsession began, and a chain of events which was to lead me surely but circuitously to a mud hut in Africa. There are people, particularly in times of prominent famine, who become almost reverent when you say you are an aid worker. Actually, the reason I first got interested in Africa was because I fancied someone. That's about how saintly I am, if you really want to know. If Oliver had asked me out that night in the Albert Hall, I'd probably have never even heard of Nambula. As it was, Sir William interrupted us. “Oliver, Oliver, wherever have you got to? Come along, come along, grub's up!”
Typically, my employer ignored me. Oliver took an elegant-enough leave, but I still had to face the fact that he had allowed himself to be whisked off to dinner with the chosen few, after kissing my neck, without so much as a what's-your-phone-number.
For about a week after the Vivaldi Works Outing I was in a state of sexual overexcitement, convinced that Oliver would find out who I was and call.
But Oliver didn't ring. He didn't ring. I reached out for any form of contact possible. I started arranging an unnatural number of evenings with a friend who had worked for him four years ago. I watched
Soft Focus
three times a week. I rang the
Soft Focus
press office for the list of the next three months' programs to see if any of them had anything remotely to do with any of our authors. I went to exhibitions on Sundays. I started reading extraordinarily dull articles in the arts pages about East European spatter-print painters. No luck. Zilch.
CHAPTER
Two
I
lay naked, with nothing above me but a sheet. My body was a perfect, cleansed and silken thing. Oliver knelt on the bed, slowly drew back the sheet and looked at me. He touched my breasts as if they were rare fragile artifacts, ran the palm of his hand luxuriantly down my stomach, until I caught my breath. “Oh, Jesus, Rosie,” he whispered. “I want to fuck you so much.”
Then the door opened, and Hermoine Hallet-McWilliam burst into the office. “Have you done that memo? Sir William's asking where it is.”
For all her well-connected background, Hermione was badly challenged in the manners department. “Nearly finished, Hermione,” I said brightly, turning back to the computer.
“Can't imagine what you've been doing,” she said. “Told you to do that an hour ago.” Then she picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Candida. Hi. Smee. Listen, you going to be Larkfield at the weekend? That's
completely
brilliant. Ophelia's coming with Hero and Perpetua. Well, fairly smart, I suppose. Absolutely. Quite agree. No, you're quite right. Well, say hello to Lucretia for me. Bye.”
One of these days she would answer the phone to someone called Beelzebub.
Suddenly I was all softness and radiance in a powder-blue wrap. The sun was streaming down on us as we sat at my kitchen table. It was our first breakfast together.
“People can be really quite different from each other, can't they, Oliver?” I said.
“Sorry, darling?”
“I, for example, like a warm currant tea cake for my breakfast. You, on the other hand, might prefer muesli, or scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, or bagels perhaps, with a range of cheeses,” I said, opening my immaculate fridge to reveal an array of tempting foodstuffs.
“Rosemary.” Hermione was standing above me, staring at me furiously. “I am not. Going. To ask you. Again. May I please have Sir William's memo?”
I turned back, under Hermione's gaze, to the computer and started typing out the handwritten memo which lay on the desk. It was another of Sir William's mad attempts to make himself more famous.
23
J
ULY
1985
T
O
: A
LL MEMBERS OF THE
P
UBLICITY
D
EPARTMENT
F
ROM
: S
IR
W
ILLIAM
G
INSBERG
R
E
: C
ORPORATE PROFILE
-
RAISING
We are looking very very hard for ways of increasing public awareness of the socially responsible aspects of the company and myself as its chairman. In the light of the recent Live Aid concert it is very very important Ginsberg and Fink are seen to be doing their bit.
Suddenly the first birth pangs of an idea twinged in my brain. Startled by the sensation, I reached for the list of forthcoming
Soft Focus
programs, which was lying in a pile of papers on my desk. I scanned the list. There it was:
P
ROGRAM
25:
In the wake of Band Aid and Live Aid, Soft Focus investigates the new phenomenon of charity in relation to
popular culture, and looks at the contribution of various areas of the arts world to aid for the Ethiopian famine.
I reckoned it ought to be possible to get Sir William onto the program, although, obviously, it would have to involve a lot of consultation with the producer.
*
“Books.” Sir William banged his fist down on his large mahogany desk. “Ver' good idea. Take 'em some books. Books all over the shop, clutterin' the place up. Take 'em out in an airlift. Ties in smooth as a sewin' machine. Ver' good angle for an arts program.”
“Don't you think the Ethiopians would rather have something to eat?” I said.
“No, no, no. Books. Just the ticket. Every man jack in the whole ruddy shootin' match flyin' out food. Need somethin' to read while they're waitin' for it.”
“In fact, although naturally food is the pressing concern, there may actually be something interesting for us in the books concept.” Eamonn Salt, the press officer for the SUSTAIN charity, pulled at his beard. Sir William pulled at his beard too.
“Really?” I said.
“Yes, indeed. We're trying to get away from the dehumanizing of the indigenous African in the media famine coverage,” Eamonn went on in his flat monotone. “Introducing the notion of the learned African person, the intelligent African thirsting for knowledge to replace what we call the Starving Monkey Myth. Your idea might well have a role to play in increasing public empathy, though many of my colleagues would disagree. It's a different school of thought. Though, of course, we'd be up against public outrage about waste of resources, charity for luxury. I'm sure you're familiar with the arguments.”
“Ver' good. Arguments. Books. Just the ticket to get the
Soft Focus
lot goin',” said Sir William.
“But would the Ethiopians be able to read the books if they're in English?” I said.
“Ah, well, remember, the famine covers the whole of the Sahel. Your best bet might be to send them to the camps on the border between Abouti and Nambula. There are refugees from Kefti there who are highly educated. The Keftians have an excellent British-based education system,” said Eamonn.
“Where's Kefti?” I said.
“Rebel province of Abouti, bordering Nambula, North Africa. The Keftians have been pursuing a somewhat bloody war for independence from the Marxist regime in Abouti for twenty-five years. Highly organized culture. The Sahel famine has hit them probably harder than anyoneâit is impossible for the NGOs to get food aid to them because of the war and for diplomatic reasons. There is a major exodus from Kefti at present over the border into Nambula. Very, very severe malnourishment there.”
“What about taking out food with a few books thrown in?” I said.
“Ruddy good idea,” said Sir William. “First rate. Good thinkin', gel.”
Fired up with unaccustomed zeal, I started organizing an appeal among the staff of the corporation for the food, rounding up remaindered books, looking into sponsored flights. I rang up
Soft Focus
and fixed up a meeting for a week's time with Sir William, Oliver Marchant and me. A vision of Africa, with its tribes, drums, fires and lions, danced and twinkled. I thought of Geldof, I thought of purpose and meaning, I thought of relief workers being passionate, poor and self-sacrificing, saving the grateful Africans. But mainly I thought of Oliver.
CHAPTER
Three
W
here's my Kit-Kat?”
Henry was standing outside the cabana, looking around indignantly. The staff had finished breakfast and were wandering around the compound getting ready to go to the camp. Sian hurried over to Henry.
“My bloody Katerina Kit-Kat. I left it in Fenella Fridge and somebody's Sophia Scoffed it.”
Sian was talking to him in a low voice, soothing him.
“Henry, you're blind and stupid,” I called across. “It's under the antibiotics. Go and have another look.”
“Ding
dong
!” he said, turning round and raising his eyebrows suggestively. “I do so
love
it when you get all strict,” and he sauntered back into the cabana, as Sian hurried after him.
The sun was starting to burn now. The first trails of smoke were beginning to rise above the camp and figures were moving slowly along the paths and across the plain: a boy leading a donkey carrying two bulging leather sacks of water, a woman with a pile of firewood on her head, a man in a white djellaba walking with a stick balanced on his shoulders, arms hanging lazily over the stick. In a few hours' time the light would be blinding white and the heat would become claustrophobic. It was easy to imagine you were going to suffocate and stop breathing.
Betty came bustling across the gravel towards me. “I don't want to intrude before you've started your day properly, dear,” she said, “though . . .”âshe opened her eyes very wide and showed me her watchâ“it is six o'clock. But I wondered if I could have a little word in your ear.”