Vanished Years (8 page)

The airport building itself is quite modest and totally dwarfed by the rows of huge white jets parked around it. They look evil and incongruous against the explosion of summer green that surrounds them. This forest smoulders with heat, livid and threatening, kept at bay by wire fences through which its tendrils creep, clinging to the boiling tarmac, pushing against the fence with all its force. It feels for a chilling moment, as we squawk and clatter to our cars in the setting sun, that nature actually hates us and is seeing us quite clearly for what we are – a line of killer ants in black dresses and patent-leather bags, all set to chomp our way through Washington. The engines of our jet cut out and there is an ear-splitting silence. All life is stunned, but after a second every cicada in the forest rediscovers its voice. Birds begin to chatter and the giant Lyme ticks crackle as they lick their lips and hang from the gently waving branches, scanning the horizon for a passing blood bag to infect. Our shrieks and giggles join this deafening cacophony as we climb into our phalanx of limousines, clunk clunk clunk, and drive into the city.

The NBC deal is born quite suddenly as I walk through the front door of our elegant British Embassy built by Lutyens. It is a sitcom.
The ambassador, good looking, sleek in black tie, greets us at the door with his wife standing by – a pretty, slightly wild-eyed lady with a vaguely German accent. Behind them a vista of dove-grey rooms under glittering chandeliers. Mr Ambassador, or Sir Christopher as this one is called, is full of swishy ‘bons mots’ and presents us to the ghastly Jack Straw, who grins like a ferret and flings in a few laid-back drolleries himself. They are Blair people, better looking, sharper cut, with their bright engaging smiles of even fluorescent teeth, than their Conservative (smelly retriever) predecessors. Sir Christopher is magnetic, debonair, genuinely interested – or a great diplomat. I look at him and the world falls away. In a blinding flash I see dollars and the future. I must make a sitcom about the British Embassy and play a charming British diplomat installing myself for ever in the minds of America as Mr Ambassador. I can’t believe it. I can hardly breathe.

My idea broadens and deepens with every turn around the polished grey rooms where
le tout
Washington congregates. The Queen observes, busty and distant, from above the fireplace. Canapés are served by cheeky young boys in livery with tufty hairdos and forget-me-not eyes. They have fabulous accents from home and I can’t help exploding briefly with patriotic fervour, so I drop a Percocet and have a couple of vodka and tonics, and pretty soon, as far as I am concerned, I am the British Ambassador. I breeze around the room charming everyone to death.

‘Would you like me to get you another drink?’

‘Let me light that for you.’

I elbow my way into a Simon Schama huddle of six breathless, strapless, Washington hags. Simon is a gigantic hummingbird flapping above them. Their faces gape, fascinated and slightly terrified, hanging on his every word. How does he do it? I am extremely jealous by now. Well, readers, he has a strange technique. First he confuses them with his hands. These giant paddles bat around his face, which contorts and thrusts, and all this has the same effect as hypnosis. The women sway, numbed by the golden elixir of his
repartee. Once they are hypnotised, he does what all stars do and sucks out their energy, and soon he’s flapping off to the next cluster of glistening hymens for cross-pollination.

One of the recently sucked-dry hags of our group turns to me. She has a thin rust bouffant, mascara-caked lashes and a turkey’s powdered gizzard throttled by aquamarines. She looks drained and clutches my arm.

‘Oh my God!’ she croaks. ‘He knows
everything
!’

‘Isn’t it ghastly?’ I reply, suave, debonair, feeling very cosy by now on the Percocet. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his next series is called
History of the Universe
, part one.’

The embassy is a brilliant reflection of our British sense of ownership. It is a Queen Anne mansion on one side and a Southern plantation house on the other. You walk through the British Empire into its American backyard. Now I am standing under the columns of this Southern porch, watching the pageant unfold inside the house. It is about half past nine and the light is going. The gardens are fairy lit behind me. Huge lanterns shine dimly under the colonnade. Crammed behind the windows, the party explodes with colour and noise, the men in black and white crushed against the rainbow of colour worn by the fascinating females of Washington. Smokers observe from the shadows outside, the orange dots of their cigarettes hovering around them like personal fairies as they talk.

Inside, above the crowd, a towering beauty with a long neck and short honey-coloured curls makes her way across the room towards the garden. A path is cleared for her as people recoil and whisper as she moves by. She throbs with an invisible energy, an alien in an empire-line dress. She stops only once – to talk to an ancient man in a chair. He is Alan Greenspan, the keeper of the American purse, and he rises like a failing erection, gloating as she stoops to hug him, his glasses squashed comically against her collarbone. She holds him to her, and then thrusts him away, grasping his shoulders in her manicured hands as if he is a favourite shih tzu scooped up from its
basket. Alan’s glasses are lopsided as he glares at her beatifically, sustained by the energy of her interest and little else. As soon as the towering beauty moves on, he collapses back into his seat, drained but radiant, and the lady comes out onto the terrace trailed by a small man in spectacles holding a jewel-encrusted handbag.

‘Give me my bag,’ she orders.

‘Her husband,’ whispers a horsy voice beside me, as if reading my thoughts.

I turn around. A jolly woman in a sensible black dress has materialised from the gloom.

‘You look like you need a top-up. Hi. I’m Amanda Downes. I simply wurship you.’ She takes my glass and snaps her fingers at a passing waiter. ‘I’m the housekeeper here. Barry darling, look sharp and get Mr Everett another drink.’

‘Who is the lady with the tiny man?’ I ask.

‘You don’t know Beth Dozoretz?’ she asks incredulously, eyes bulging. ‘Fancy that! Is this your first time in town?’

‘Yes.’

She leans in close for a theatrical aside. ‘She’s a rahlie close frund of the President’s. Shall I introduce you?’ Without waiting for a reply she strides over to the alien Empress, her hand outstretched.

‘Why, Amanda,’ purrs the beauty. ‘What a wonderful night.’

‘Thank you, Beth. Ronald, have you met Rupert Everett?’ She gestures towards me to join the group. ‘He’s a part of the delegation.’

Amanda reminds me of my mother. Sensible court shoes, a wide stride and a handsome face. Her dark hair is swept back by a gilded Alice band. She has twinkly eyes and humorous lips made for giving orders rather than head. I immediately love her. More importantly, she will be a marvellous character in
Mr Ambassador
.

We settle on wicker chairs and look out over the garden and Beth quizzes Amanda about the latest drama to unfold at the embassy. The ambassador’s wife has apparently lost her children.

‘How many?’ I ask.

‘Two-can-you-beat-it,’ replies Amanda.

I try – and fail – to adapt an Oscar Wilde quote. ‘Really! To lose one child is unfortunate, et cetera …’

‘It’s a terrible story,’ drawls Beth, unamused. ‘They were kidnapped by her ex-husband. Isn’t that right, Amanda?’

‘No, Beth. They weren’t kidnapped,’ Amanda says firmly. ‘Right after she divorced they went to see him in Germany and he never let them come back.’

‘Maybe they didn’t want to,’ I venture.

‘Oh stop it. They weren’t allowed to,’ scoffs Amanda, getting up. ‘We all want Mummy when we’re tots! Well, heels down, toes up! I must trot on. I’ll see
you
later, young man!’

Beth and Ronald love me in
My Best Friend’s Wedding
. We joke around and the conversation drifts to the political situation and the upcoming election, about which I am blissfully ignorant. Many of the faces we will soon learn to hate are already here tonight, being stuffed and roasted on the diplomat barbecue, should Al Gore not win the White House, and Beth points them all out. She is cool but caged, Washington’s Madame du Barry. Her ascendancy will soon be over and touched by scandal. Is she the mystery figure behind the pardoning of America’s biggest fugitive, Marc Rich? Either way, she will not make it into the camp of the next administration even if Al Gore wins. She is a Clinton woman and has probably, I muse, looking at her strange alien face, lit a few cigars by rubbing her legs together, and that particular talent will probably not be included in the after-dinner party tricks conjured up by either Mrs Gore or poor Mrs Bush next season. She defends her master casually but her eyes are cut glass as she talks.

I throw in a few political scoops I heard on the plane over. This is a technique I like to think I perfected living in Hollywood, where, never having the energy to go to the cinema, I concocted a game with my best friend Mel. When asked what we thought of a latest film, we simply repeated all the views we heard at lunch and dinner that week. As you know, or maybe you don’t, nobody talks about anything else in Hollywood. Just movies. Nothing else exists, to the
point that you don’t really need to ever go and see one. It has already been accurately and minutely discussed at those lunches and dinners by the wide-ranging circle – from the wannabes to the had-enoughs – of your acquaintance, those intimate friends and professional handlers (and that includes hookers and housekeepers), so that at dinner you can sound so brilliant and perceptive that, on one occasion, my observations about Dances
With Wolves
being so thorough and particular, I was offered a job as a critic on the E! channel. Well, Washington is just the same.

Dinner is announced and we get up.

‘You have an extraordinary grasp. You gotta meet the President.’ She says it simply as if it is one of the most important things to do next week. (What she probably means, I realise now, is that I am such a spectacular bullshitter that he and I might possibly get along.)

‘Yes, I have,’ I agree, nonchalant.

‘We gotta set that up. Huh, Ron?’

‘We really should,’ he agrees sagely.

We all move on. Every time I see Ron for the rest of the night he taps his forehead but keeps walking.

(They do organise it. Two weeks later I am at the White House, sitting at Chelsea Clinton’s table for the last Clinton bash.)

Amanda Downes supervises the serving of the meal with military precision. She may not be an intimate of the President, but she is definitely a Washington star – a diplomatic Cinderella – because everyone lights up when she squeezes behind their chairs, particularly Colin Powell who turns, beckons her down with a finger and whispers in her ear. Her ample bosom brushes against his shoulder, and his little eyes swivel briefly. She prods him with a big bossy finger and he throws back his head roaring with laughter. I wonder if she is CIA? Quite possibly.

I turn my attention to my cash cow – the ambassador. He is deep in discussion with Tina Brown. Assured, casual, vaguely flirtatious, he never flinches under her ice-blue scrutiny. ‘Mr Ambassador’ on the other hand must be vague and accident prone, dashing and
depressive, possibly dyslexic. (A good modern condition is always a crowd pleaser.) He will need a nice, bipolar, semi-alcoholic wife, a leggy blonde (American, obviously) secretary, a diplomatic sidekick and bingo! Imagine: if it works, how rich and successful I will be! I have to clutch the chair to stop myself from passing out. I will be bigger than Dick Van Dyke and Lucille Ball put together. The idea is brilliant.

The speeches begin. Jack Straw is self-congratulatory and much appreciated. He is the warm-up artist. The ambassador speaks next and then introduces the Child Catcher, who responds, flapping and quoting, and bringing the house down. His technique and timing are flawless. He throws his jokes casually into the wind, and watches them with a stagey gloom as they waft over the sea of upturned faces, creating shimmering ripples of glee that he quickly builds into waves that are soon slapping against the sides of the room. The footmen and maids stand by mirrored doors that separate the corridors of power from the back stairs and basements. Unconcerned, they watch the faces of the old regime laughing victoriously in the candlelight. For a moment Beth Dozoretz, taut and unfathomable, is reflected and multiplied in the panes of a closing door, only to be replaced by a laughing jowly Karl Rove at a table of Neo-Conservatives.

It’s sheer Visconti. The whole thing – from the dove-grey room itself, sparkling under its priceless chandeliers, to the conga line of tables below, covered with linen, glasses, bottles and candlesticks, curling towards the top table, to the powerful men and women, sprawled on gilt chairs, their polished shoes planted firmly on the polished floor – is like one of those pictures in a gallery, of a sumptuous state feast preceding a period of intense upheaval. The little painted faces have no clue about the bloodbath to come. Tonight we are all overcome with confidence on this shifting sandbar, but strange underwater currents are already preparing to sweep us all away, leaving – possibly – only Amanda Downes, bobbing up and down on the changing tide. Ambassadors, ministers, entire regimes will come and go but a good housekeeper is hard to find.

In the riotous applause that follows Simon’s speech, the ambassador surveys his party with pride. Tina claps lovingly, and I go outside to sit on the terrace and think. Another speech has started. I close my eyes and soon I am dreaming. Canned laughter, waves of applause and
me
– a body-building ambassador ruling the airwaves with my own unique blend of nonchalant glamour and effervescent humour.

N
ow I am listening to another speech behind another door. A warm-up artiste – one of the best in the business, I am assured – is regaling a studio audience with the peculiar humour that creates canned laughter. Yes, it actually comes out canned – in short bursts of mechanical glee. Standing next to me is Derek Jacobi. We are both caked in make-up, suited and booted, but no amount of brickcoloured foundation can hide the fact that we are grey and drained and verging on hysteria. I feel like a drowning man. My whole life sweeps over me in waves. Of all the errors I have ever made, one looms higher than the rest, a tsunami of ambition and greed, gathering pace and roaring towards me, ready to smash this makeshift wall of planks and poles against which I cower. Why did I ever set foot in the fucking British Embassy? A young man approaches through the gloom.