Meltdown (19 page)

Jimmy gave her a hug. He’d known she’d be extra-emotional that day. The concert had not begun yet but they had been playing documentary stuff on the enormous screens (the stuff the BBC wasn’t showing). There was terribly moving footage of the devastating consequences of poverty in the developing world. Inevitably it was the children whose suffering featured most tellingly and Monica couldn’t bear that, particularly since she was pregnant with their second child. The pictures of starving babies combined with Rupert’s smug negativity had pushed her over the edge.

After she had said her piece she began to cry, which Jimmy knew she hated.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s the baby. My brain’s going to milk. It happened in Waitrose the other day, for no reason at all, while I was choosing a muesli. Don’t look at me, I feel an idiot.’

‘Come on, Mon,’ Jimmy said. ‘Rupert’s just being the arse he always is. Trying to be clever. And this is supposed to be a party, isn’t it? We’re celebrating the human spirit, aren’t we?’

‘By getting pissed, gorging ourselves and watching top bands from the best seats,’ said Rupert. ‘Sorry, is that the wrong thing to say? Just me being an arse and trying to be clever.’

All eyes turned on Rupert again.

Henry and Jane looked particularly angry. As teenagers they had each individually attended the original Live Aid concert and had carried this coincidence as a kind of talisman for their mutual integrity ever since. Henry often said that Live Aid had been one of the reasons he had gone into politics in the first place. To try to make a difference.

Silently Henry opened one of the information packs that had been placed on the corporate tables and slid it across towards Rupert. It was the picture of a dead baby in its mother’s arms, the mother, half mad with grief and hunger, still attempting to put her empty breast into its fly-blown mouth. Rupert glanced down at the picture and then shrugged.

‘Make you think at all?’ Henry asked. ‘I imagine that even you care about that, don’t you?’

Then Rupert smiled. You did not rise to become a senior director of an entire bank before your fortieth birthday as Rupert had done without being able to withstand a bit of emotional blackmail. Since taking over at the Royal Lancashire, Rupert had come to be known as Roop the Boot for the record number of redundancies he had instigated in the name of streamlining his bank’s ‘business model’. You couldn’t shame Roop.

‘Of course I care about it,’ Rupert said easily, ‘and I imagine that I probably
do
as much about it as you do, Henry. The only difference is that I don’t insist on the right to congratulate myself on my moral integrity as well. I
know
that every step and every breath I take on this earth are selfish ones. I
know
that the only number in life that really matters is
numero uno
.’

Henry’s lip tightened. He and Rupert had always been the least close members of the gang and had actually had a fist fight at university over the rights and wrongs of the first Iraq war. Of course after Monica had got so upset everyone had assumed that the discussion was over, and now they all clamoured to ask Henry and Rupert to drop it.

‘Guys!’ Jimmy said. ‘Come on, this is supposed to be fun.’

‘Let it go, Henry,’ Jane said. ‘You know you won’t change Rupert.’

‘Well, if we can’t change the bastard at the Live 8 concert, when can we?’ Henry snapped back. ‘Come on, people, I’ve been in Parliament for eight years now. I know all about complacency and so-called compassion fatigue. Where I work, every day is a fucking compromise but that’s no excuse for not trying. Things
can
change. Things
are
getting better.’

‘We banned foxhunting,’ said Jane.

‘Exactly,’ said Henry, ‘and that’s only the start. We’re not just here to get pissed and watch U2.’

‘Well, maybe not just to,’ Jimmy put in, ‘but it’s a good basis from which to build a day.’

‘No,’ Henry insisted, ‘this is supposed to be about raising consciousness. Let’s start with our own. You just said that you do as much as I do. What do you mean by that, Rupert? What exactly
do
you do?’

‘Amanda and I have a charity budget just as I imagine you and Jane do, Henry.’

‘Yes, mate, we certainly do.’

‘Oh
please
,’ Jane protested, ‘let’s not have an argument about who gives the most money away. It’s horrible.’

‘So you give money to charity, Henry,’ Rupert pressed on. ‘So do Amanda and I, as it happens. Mainly school bursaries and my historic churches foundation but as Jane says, let’s not quibble over causes and sums. What else do you do about the poverty that you want to make history? I don’t mean as a politician, I mean as a private individual. What do you do that I don’t?’

‘Look!’ Laura shouted. ‘Come on, Dave, I think it’s about to start. You’ll have to put me on your shoulders later.’

‘One one! Two two!’ a man said on the stage into various microphones while another man hit the drums.

‘Is that U2’s drummer?’ Monica asked, feigning excitement.

‘How would you tell?’ Amanda said. ‘I mean could anyone recognize the other two members of U2?’

‘Let’s just forget it, hey, guys,’ Jimmy said to Henry and Rupert, pouring more champagne. ‘This is a party and it isn’t the time.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Jimbo,’ David observed. ‘I reckon if we are going to have a discussion like this then now clearly
is
the time.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Rupert, who still had Henry in his sights.

‘So would your point be, Henry old pal,’ he continued, ‘that because I earn ten times more than you I am ten times more responsible for the death of the baby in that picture?’

‘Rupert, this is not seemly,’ Amanda snapped. She had appeared to be enjoying the earlier part of the conversation but now that numbers were involved she obviously felt it had gone too far.

‘It’s entirely seemly. Well, Henry?’

‘Yes, actually,’ Henry replied, ‘in some ways I think I
am
saying that. Of course we all bear responsibility for world inequality but the inflation of corporate incomes is a symptom of the ever-increasing imbalance between—’

Rupert interrupted him. ‘But this leaflet says that five pounds would have saved the baby’s life. Clearly the mother didn’t have a fiver, because the baby’s dead. So by your logic of income comparison that makes you at least
twenty thousand fivers
more responsible for the child’s death than the adults in its own community. Doesn’t that make the difference between your culpability and mine somewhat semantic?’

There was a moment’s silence. It was clear that everybody knew Rupert was talking rubbish but for a moment they were not sure how to counter it.

‘It’s not that bloody simple, Rupert, and you know it,’ Henry blustered. ‘I earn a reasonable wage, you earn a ridiculous and obscene—’

‘Let’s stop this,’ Lizzie said, ‘please.’

‘Yes, come on, guys!’ Robbo chipped in, having finally got bored enough to protest. ‘Do you think they do anything besides champagne? I’d love a beer.’

But Henry had no intention of allowing Rupert to have the last word.

‘The people in this crowd are decent, caring, hardworking people, Rupert,’ Henry shouted. ‘They do not earn insane bonuses. They earn decent livings and they earn them doing proper jobs. Not bloody
banking
.’

‘And every single one of them is in debt to a bank, Henry. As indeed are you. And like you, they want those debts to be cheap. Just like you wanted the mortgages on
both
your homes to be cheap.’

‘Hang on, Rupert,’ Jane began, angered at Rupert’s implication. ‘Don’t start bringing in second homes! Henry’s an MP, he has to work in two places. And what’s more, we did both our homes up ourselves, working bloody hard every weekend for a whole summer.’

‘Are you suggesting, Jane,’ Amanda retorted, ‘that because you did your own grouting your second home is somehow less unfair on the world’s poor than mine?’

‘You’ve got about
ten
second homes, Amanda!’ Jane said, having to shout above the increasing noise of the sound check.

‘At which point I refer you,’ said Rupert, entirely relaxed once more, ‘to the argument of the five-pound baby. The real difference between your wealth and mine is minute, it’s tiny, it’s
nothing
, compared to the distance between your wealth and this African mother’s about whom you care so much. And all our wealth, the wealth of everyone in this crowd, all the cheap mortgages, ballooning property values, low taxes, cheap training shoes, all of it is created and maintained by the workings of the very system about which everyone here is claiming to be so angry.’

Rupert stood up and, turning his back on the stage, surveyed the vast crowd. So many happy, eager faces. Many girlfriends already on boyfriends’ shoulders. Comedy hats in the shape of huge bananas, earnest banners, raised plastic bottles saluting the roadies on the stage.

‘Look at that,’ Rupert said. ‘Just look at that, a sea of placards saying that those girls want to “make poverty history”. Do you see any placards saying, “and I’m prepared to pay more for my Gap clothes and my Nike shoes in order to make it happen”? Is anyone pleading for higher interest rates so that their bank can invest more in the third world? More expensive petrol so that Shell and BP won’t screw the poor African quite as fucking viciously? No! They’re bloody not. Because the people in that crowd want to make poverty history but
not
if they have to pay for it themselves. Not if it means sacrificing their cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap credit, cheap air travel and low taxes.’

Henry leaped to his feet, squaring off in front of Rupert. It looked as if Henry was going to hit him.

‘Life involves compromises,’ he shouted, ‘so does principle. That is not an excuse for moral inertia!’

‘Pardon?’ Rupert curled his lip. ‘Do I hear a politician making noise and saying nothing? How very rare.’

‘Of course these people care about their own jobs and services, their homes and their well-being. But they still want some moral justice. How can you doubt it? I mean seriously, Rupert, how can you fucking doubt it? They are calling on us politicians to get off our arses and create a new mindset. To start working towards a fairer and more equitable . . .’

‘They are fucking NOT,’ Rupert replied, raising his own voice for the first time. ‘They
say
they are but they don’t mean it. Because if they did mean it, you’d do it. You’re a politician, Henry, and you know that you and your cronies will do
whatever it takes
to get re-elected. If sending the entire contents of the Bank of England to Ethiopia would secure you another term, you’d do it in a second. But you know that it wouldn’t because if people really wanted to make poverty history they’d vote Green or Socialist or Anarchist or some other pointless silly bollocks, but they
don’t
. What people want is low taxes and cheap money, which is why they vote Tory or New Labour or Lib Dem. Why do you think the entire media is behind this event? Every newspaper proprietor? Because they know it will change
nothing
. It’s a joke. A party. Just like Jimmy says. Yes, people would like to make poverty history, it would be very nice, but NOT if it means taking a cut themselves. Any more than Bono and U2 want to pay the tax they’ve been lucky to avoid these last twenty years just by being Irish. That’s why we’re all fucking hypocrites. You, me, Bono, Coldplay and every bloody overexcited shop assistant in the crowd. Why the fuck should
we
, having condemned half the planet to living in abject misery to support what we see as a basic lifestyle, then expect to be able to strut about in Hyde Park boasting about how caring and generous we are
at the same time
.’

On the stage the roadies seemed finally to have finished their counting and banging. At Jimmy’s table there was an angry and depressed silence. Rupert had sat down but Henry was still standing, his fists clenched, his knuckles white.

‘You’re wrong, you
shit
,’ he said, ‘really you’re wrong.’ But as the noise of the crowd grew in expectation of the imminent arrival of rock superstars, he offered no further argument.

‘Blimey, Rupert,’ Jimmy said finally, ‘you know how to piss on a parade.’

‘Well, actually, on another subject entirely,’ Rupert said, ‘I have some rather fun news. I’m to be knighted by Blair for services to banking.’

‘Yes, I’m to be
Lady
Bennett.’ Amanda beamed. ‘Of course I shan’t insist that close friends use the title.’

There was a huge cheer. Familiar chords filled the air.

‘Hello, Hyde Park!’ said Bono.

A farewell piss-up

On the second evening after the night Robbo died, his many friends assembled in London. The funeral plans had not yet been put in place, but the death of such a hugely popular man had left many people struggling to cope and feeling the need to meet up immediately to share their loss. Therefore with the blessing of Lizzie (herself too upset to attend), Rupert had arranged a kind of pre-wake piss-up in the function room of his London club with a malt whisky tasting, several real ales on tap and a takeaway curry delivered.

Fittingly, in view of the character of the deceased, the evening, though desperately sad, was good-natured and ribald. Rupert spoke first.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I loved the bastard dearly. We all loved him. He was the best and kindest bloke I ever knew. I think everybody here feels that and no doubt at the funeral we’ll all get a chance to bang on about it. But this evening, since darling Lizzie ain’t here, let’s be honest, one of the things we loved about him most was that he was so utterly bloody useless!’

There was laughter, of course, and many comically stern cries of ‘Shame!’

‘Useless?’ Jimmy shouted. ‘Bollocks he was useless! He knew every British number one since charts began and he could burp the National Anthem!’