Cause Celeb (14 page)

He was gripping the other end of the table very, very tightly so that the red cloth was bunching up in his grip and the ice bucket was starting to slide towards him.

“Can you hear me, Oliver? Don't you understand what I'm saying?”

“I have asked you a civilized question and I expect a civilized answer. WILL—YOU—MARRY—ME?”

“No.”

One of the glasses fell over as the tablecloth slid.

“Oliver, please, don't do this. Come on, let's go. We can talk somewhere else.”

“I am waiting for an answer. WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

“No.”

The other glass fell over now. The ice bucket was nearly in front of him. I looked up at the softly twinkling chandeliers.

“Rosie, I AM ASKING YOU TO MARRY ME.”

“Oh, shut up, you silly old fool, just shut
up
,” I said, and ran for it again.

Back home I had to disconnect the buzzer with a screwdriver. His car stayed outside the house for an hour. Then the phone rang. The car was still there. Maybe it was Shirley. I picked up the receiver.

“I love you.”

“You love me.”

“I love you.”

“Are you sure? You're sure it's not adoration? Or falling for me but not in love with me, or a love affair where you don't actually love me? Or hurt pride?”

He slammed the phone down. It rang again immediately. I reached down under the table and pulled the little plug out of its socket. Then there was silence.

The car stayed outside all night. It was still there when I got up at 4:00
A
.
M
. It was still there when I was brushing my teeth in the morning. I called Shirley and asked if I could come and stay again. I started packing a bag. At ten o'clock there was a battering on the door of my flat. Someone had let him in. I grabbed the bag, went out on the balcony, climbed over, knocked on the next-door French window and Simon, the thin bespectacled engineer who lived in the next-door flat, appeared looking very surprised. The knocking was still going on.

“Would you be very sweet and let me come out through your flat?”

An idiotic gleam came into his eye. “Aha. Are you having another of your Stormy Rows?”

“Come on. This is serious. Let me out.”

“What's going on?” He was leaning over the balcony, trying to look into my living room. The knocking was still going on.

“Be quiet there, will you? Some of us are trying to sleep,” shouted Simon, smirking. The knocking stopped.

I shot through his room, out of the door, down the stairs, out, round the corner, another corner, into another taxi. I was getting very fit from all this running, and very broke.

I went in to work deliberately late on Monday morning, but I knew I was safe from Oliver there. He wouldn't make himself look foolish in public. I cleared my desk, went home, packed, unhooked the answerphone and headed for my parents' home in Devon. It turned out that the disaster relief course had already started, but I persuaded them to take me on a few weeks late and moved to Basingstoke. Letters from Oliver began to appear in my college pigeonhole. They were alternately attacking and loving. They explained about the weakness of my character, how I had made him feel trapped, pressured, because I loved him too much. How I was superficial, silly, looked at the world through rose-tinted spectacles. How I had ruined his life with my unwanted presence. How it had been my fault for not being stronger. Then there were the others extolling my virtues, telling me of all the things I had awoken in him, begging me to come back. I did nothing. Eventually he stopped.

The relief was overwhelming at first. It was wonderful to be quiet and alone, to get on with my work. But, still, I was very sad because I had lost my belief in love and in myself. The fact that I had eventually swung the seesaw with Oliver didn't help. What was the point of love if it was a game of see-who-cares-less, if it was such a ridiculous carry-on? What was the point of me, if I allowed my whole life to center on it, then mucked it up?

At times I got relief by turning Oliver into a monster in my head. Maybe there are just some men like that in the world, I thought. Men who have to be in charge, who have to punish those who awaken feelings in them which they cannot control. Men who will lure you with tenderness till you believe that you are safe, then slap you down. Men whom it is impossible for anyone to love without losing their dignity. Men who have to damage those who love them most. But, then, I had fallen in love with one, so what did that make me?

I decided to toughen up. I threw myself into the disaster relief course, poring over the books in the evenings. I kept in touch with Safila and with Edwina Roper at SUSTAIN. Miriam, who was the administrator at Safila, wrote to tell me the temporary assistant was leaving in August and promised to push for me to replace him. My tutor sent SUSTAIN a glowing reference. In June a letter arrived from them offering me the job. I let out my flat, said my good-byes, and left for Nambula.

W
hat've we been working for all these years, if they're just going to starve to death again?” said Debbie.

It was the day after I'd been to see André in Sidra. We were sitting round the table in the cabana, having coffee after supper. We had worked too late. It was getting on for midnight, and we were all frayed around the edges. We had nearly four hundred new arrivals now. They were starting to come from different regions of Kefti, all talking about locusts, and crop losses.

“I think what we have to do is just get on with it for a few days, get the system up and running, get used to the new situation,” I said, trying to sound confident. “We're handling it well. I was very proud of us all when I got back yesterday.”

The attempt at a rousing speech sat in the middle of the table like a big wet fish.

“That's all very well, isn't it, but we shouldn't be in this situation,” said Linda, her mouth tight.

“It's not Rosie's fault,” said Sian.

Debbie looked mortified. “I'm not saying it is. Of course I'm not. It's just a bit of a bugger, that's all.”

“Quite so. Bloody Serena Sackville-System is to blame,” said Henry. “Must say you're looking bloody sexy with that smudge across your eye, Sian. Making me a bit on the frisky side.”

Sian looked upset, and started rubbing at her face. Even Henry's jollity jarred tonight. Poor old Sian, so fastidious and neat, hadn't had time to wash. Normally Henry would have known not to mention it. The whole chemistry of the group had been altered. We weren't sure of each other anymore. I thought that I should be a better leader, more capable of rousing the troops and getting something done.

“If I still can't get through on the radio tomorrow I'll go up to El Daman,” I said. “Don't worry. We're not going to let another disaster happen.” Rash words. “Meanwhile, we've just got to show what we can do.”

“Show who? Who are we supposed to be showing?” said Linda.

She had a point. We were really alone. What were we supposed to do? We could try and control disease, but once we ran out of food and drugs, if these malnourished, infected refugees kept flooding in, we were scuppered. There was silence among us and we listened to the crickets out there in the blackness. A donkey was braying madly and forlornly like a car horn.

O'Rourke spoke eventually. “I think we're all seeing the blackest side because we're tired,” he said. “We might well find that this all blows over in a few days and it is contained. Whatever, we have to let our responsibility stop somewhere. We are just a small group of people. There is only so much we can do, and we're doing it. Aren't we?” he said, looking at me. He was trying to be supportive.

“Yes,” I said.

“Right, come on, team. Subject closed. Put in a box for time being. Time off,” said Henry.

It seemed like a very forced occasion. I tried to join in the dinnertime chat, but wanted to be silent. Possibly everyone else did too.

“I wish we could call a grown-up.” The words slipped out without me wanting them to, but for once they were the right thing to say.

“So do bloody I, I can tell you,” said Debbie.

“Me too,” said Henry.

“I
am
a grown-up, and I want my mother,” said O'Rourke.

It was all better after that. Only Betty stayed silent. She went off as soon as the meal was finished, looking most unlike herself. It worried me. I left it a while, then went after her.

Betty was surprised to see me at the door. I rarely went into her hut. She ran a hand distractedly through her hair, knocking her glasses off-kilter. “Oh. Hello. I was just, er, having a little tidy-up.”

I looked past her. There was a can of spray polish and a duster on the Formica table. Polishing Formica? Anxiety took people in the strangest ways. She was still standing there, blocking the door.

“Can I come in? I wanted a chat.” She'd done this often enough to me.

“Of course, yes, come in. Would you like a glass of water?”

When she was turned with her back to me, pouring out the water, I saw her shoulders starting to shake. She was crying. I half got up.

“Betty—”

“Oh, don't, don't, please don't. Don't be sorry for me.”

She turned back towards me, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I'm just a stupid old woman. A stupid, silly, useless old woman.”

Part of me, I must admit, thought, “Well, you might have a point.” Then I saw her looking so sunken and sad and felt real grief. I sat down next to her.

“I'm old, I'm old. Old and finished. Look at me. Everyone thinks I'm a silly old woman. You don't need me here. You have O'Rourke. Much better than me. You'll all be glad to see the back of me. Then you can all be young together. Just useless, useless.”

“You're not useless. How can you say that? You're a brilliant doctor.”

“What's the point? What's the point? We can't do anything about it all, can we?”

She cried for a bit.

“We can. We are doing. We'll do it.”

This just made her cry even more. She was getting hysterical.

“Betty, look at me.”

She looked at me hopefully. Her eyes were tiny and pink behind her glasses, like a little pig's.

“I came to see you to ask you to stay. We need you to stay.”

Oh dear. This had just popped out of my mouth. It was a half-formed thought which seemed like the perfect way to cheer her up.

She brightened a little, then started to cry again. “You're only saying that to make me feel better. What have I got to go back to?”

“What about your husband—”

“That . . . that monster with his stupid young women. Nobody wants me. You wait till you get to my age. Nothing, nothing. On the scrap heap.”

“Don't say that. It's so unfair. That's just the way women are made to feel. It's not true.”

She sniffled some more.

“You
are
a wonderful doctor, you know how valuable you are—you know everything there is to know about medicine in Africa. They love you in the camp. We'll be lost without you if you go. I'm going to go to El Daman to tell Malcolm we have to have you to see us through this.”

“But you have O'Rourke now.”

“O'Rourke isn't you. He doesn't have your . . . your . . . qualities. Will you stay?”

She seemed calmer now. “Well,” sniffle sniffle, “well, I suppose if you want me to . . . if Malcolm says I can.” She gulped and pulled herself together. “You know, I know I'm a dreadful old busybody, but I really am so fond of you, so fond of you all.”

When I left her she was calm and dozy, tucked up in bed to go to sleep. It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.

Thirty more refugees arrived in the night, and in the morning the radio still wasn't working. I decided there was nothing for it but to drive up to the capital and start kicking ass with Malcolm and the UN. Presumably messages had reached them by now, but they had
to be made to take this seriously. By the time I hit the tarmac of the El Daman road, it was the busiest time of the day: five o'clock, when the desert came to life and the amber light glowed through the dust. The buses, trucks and rusting cars were joined by herds of goats and camels headed for their watering holes, pack animals, almost obscured by bales of straw, with thin comedy legs scampering beneath. Ahead of me the sun was dropping and dissolving like a vast crimson pill, touching the sandy wastes with redness and fire.

I was tense, watching. The lorries in Nambula were splendid beasts, decorated with fairy lights, paintings of jungle animals, and bits of tin and Christmas decorations. Their loose wheels wobbled precariously, their overloaded rears tipped at terrifying angles. Every few miles you would pass some garish testimony to what could happen—an upside-down truck lying with its wheels in the air;another broken down with a line of three cars squashed into the back; an overlong one collapsed in the middle with a small car underneath.

I didn't crash, but I was pulled over at two security checkpoints and had to bribe my way out. By the time I reached the outskirts of El Daman it was eleven at night. The traffic was heavy here, even at this time. I passed the first shanties of the city, dotted with fires; the great twinkling monolith of the Hilton, set apart from the smells and noise like some medieval castle. I skirted the center on the busy airport road and entered the quiet wide streets of the ex-pat area where the houses of government officials and aid organizations peeked out from behind concrete walls with their molded see-through patterns. When I drew up at the gates of the Malcolm Colthorne World HQ, or SUSTAIN office and residence, no one was up except the watchman. He was up in the sense of upright, but also asleep.

Eventually he was woken by my loud rattling and banging at the gate, and he let me in. I tiptoed into a guest room, and luxuriated in being in a real bed, surrounded by real walls.

I have a fear of ceiling fans. When I watch those heavy albatross wings whizzing round I imagine what would happen if they fell off. They would whang wildly round the room chopping off arms
and heads. The fan in Malcolm's office had a wobble. I kept a vigilant eye on it, leaning my head back against the wall as I listened to his slow verbal forward rolls and back flips.

What Malcolm had been explaining to me, for what seemed like most of the morning, was that he had just been given a bollocking from head office for raising a false alarm about a bunch of orphaned children, ten thousand strong, ranging hungry, naked and armed with Kalashnikovs on the borders of the civil war in the north. When they were located by a Reuters journalist, there were in fact twenty of them, armed with little sticks. What Malcolm was working towards, in an extremely roundabout sort of way, was that he wasn't about to make an ass of himself with a second scare story in a fortnight.

I leaned forward calmly, resting my elbows on his desk and staring at him. It took him a while to wind down.

“Malcolm,” I said, “in the four years we have worked together have I ever insisted upon anything?”

“Of course,” he said, in his reassuring-the-troops voice. “You insist on things all the time, you're a very insistent person.”