Cause Celeb Page 34

“Er. Don’t want to point out the Orville Obvious,” said Henry, “but surely there’s enough babies to go round? I mean, even if it’s orphans you’re after, probably a good few more up there. No reason why everyone has to have the same ones, is there? Or am I being a total thicko?”

  Corinna was leaning against the caravan, smoking a cigarette. She saw me looking at her and gave me a sympathetic smile. She had been a different woman all afternoon, warm, sisterly, supportive. She walked over towards me now, leaned forward, brushed something away from under my eye and said “Tired?” I hoped the famine hadn’t turned her into a lesbian.

  Betty was trying to get all the jeeps parked in a cozy circle.

  “Come along,” she was saying. “We must eat. Nobody’s eaten a thing since breakfast. An army can’t march on empty stomachs. No use to the refugees if we can’t get on with the job. I made sure Kamal put some bread and corned beef in before we set off. Should be enough to go round, I think. I’ve even got a tub of mustard. Mind you, it’s English. I prefer a milder mustard myself.”

  “What a woman. Thank goodness we’ve got Betty to look after us,” said Roy the soundman, reverently.

  A hundred yards away, in the gathering darkness, Muhammad was leaning on his stick, staring towards Kefti, where the clouds were like coals against the red glow. I picked my way across the scrub towards him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, when I was beside him.

  After a while, he said, “It is very hard to bear.” And then, “But she was wonderful, was she not?”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “And if there’s a time when it is true to say a person did not die in vain . . .”

  “. . . then this was it.”

  “But still, it is very hard.”

  We were standing in complete darkness now, but it was the warm, enfolding darkness of those nights. There had been headlights approaching for some time from the direction of Safila, and now the vehicle was drawing up. Inside Betty’s circle of vehicles, the faces were lit by torches and firelight. All the group were together except O’Rourke, who was still with the refugees. The doors of the jeep opened and the troll-like figure of Vernon emerged fulsome bottom first. We could hear the tone of his voice but not the words. He sounded defensively blustery.

  “Do you know what I fear?” said Muhammad.

  “Tell me.”

  “That even after all this, very quickly, for everyone else, it will be as if it never happened.”

  “I know.”

  We stood in silence for a while.

  “They want you to go back with them, the television people, did you hear?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Would you want to?”

  “And collude in that corrupt sickness?”

  “Corrupt sickness is not confined to the West,” I said, “as we both know.”

  “I mean the sickness of the chosen few,” he said. “If I despise the unfair division of the world, the uneven granting of gifts, then when I have my chance to be plucked from the anonymity of the disadvantaged and placed within the enclosure of the privileged, when the gifts are about to shower down on me, do I say yes, or do I say no?”

  “What will you achieve by saying no?”

  He thought for a while, and then said, “Spiritual treasures.”

  “Well, I think that might be the length and breadth of it.”

  He shook his head.

  After a while I said, “If you go to London now you might be able to do something. You’re being invited to join the Famous Club. You’ll get lionized by the media, and you’ll have a measure of power. If you get the mass of ordinary people behind you, then sometimes you can change things a bit.”

  “Do you really believe so?” he said. “Do you? This is the third famine which has smitten and destroyed us in my lifetime, and it is always the same. Afterwards the cameras and the journalists come, and then the officials make plans, and they promise it will never happen again. Then all is well for a while, they grow bored, and then it happens again.”

  “Maybe we have to keep trying. Maybe it gets a little less bad each time, there’s a bit more development each time, it makes you a bit less vulnerable. Maybe you have to go to London and push to speed it up.”

  “And sacrifice myself?”

  “It’s not much of a sacrifice. You’ll be pretty comfortable. You’d get a bit rich. You’d know you’d never risk dying of hunger again.”

  “But of thirst,” he said, “spiritual thirst. I would be accepting the inequity of the system. I would be Britain’s tame, one-legged African refugee, a novelty, a token. No longer myself.”

  Someone was making their way from the group towards us. It was impossible to see who it was, but we could hear them stumbling over the scrub. It was an uneven patch of ground.

  “Hi.” Oliver emerged from the blackness. He looked very thin now.

  “Well done, my friend,” said Muhammad. “You were a hero.”

  “They’re all going now,” said Oliver. “Back to El Daman.”

  “Now?” I said.

  “Yes. They want to drive through the night and get back there tonight.”

  “I will leave you,” said Muhammad.

  Oliver and I stood looking at each other in the darkness.

  “You did a very great thing,” I said.

  “I made an heroic gesture. Anyone can do that once. Doesn’t last long, everyone sees, makes you feel fantastic.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. It’s the O’Rourkes of this world who are the heroes, slogging away unsung, surrounded by diarrhea. He’s still up there, isn’t he?”

  “This wouldn’t have happened without you. All the work in the world would have made no difference without any food.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Then, after a moment’s thought, he said, “But actually it wouldn’t, would it?”

  “No. You made it happen at every stage.”

  “I feel . . . very . . . oh, I don’t know. Thanks anyway. Thanks for . . . I mean, God, I sound like Julian. I think—”

  “What?”

  “I think. I dunno. I’m sorry I’ve been . . . This has been great for me. I feel . . . Jesus, what do I feel? I feel . . . good. I feel more . . . good than I’ve ever felt. Maybe I’ll be different now. Maybe everything will be different.”

  And there was a moment of real closeness between us. I thought how much we had both learned.

  “Rosie, I want to ask you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to ask you to come back with me.”

  I glanced across at him nervously. “Er. You know I can’t do that.”

  “I am asking you to come back with me.”

  “I can’t. I have to stay here.”

  “Rosie.” He was beginning to raise his voice. Footsteps were starting towards us across the scrub. “I am ASKING you to come back with me.”

  “You don’t really want that. You don’t really want me. You know you don’t.”

  “It’s O’Rourke, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “Rosie, I am asking you to come back with me.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve done this thing, and we’ve saved the situation and now I AM ASKING YOU.”

  “Of course I’m not sodding coming back with you,” I burst out. “You’ve seen what’s going on up there.”

  “You love O’Rourke,” he said, “don’t you?”

  “Oh, puh-lease, Oliver.” Corinna appeared out of the darkness. “Can’t you see the girl’s got more on her mind than bloody men? Here you are, little one, I’ve brought you a sandwich.”

  “I’m going back to the fire,” said Oliver.

  “Oliver,” I said, catching his arm, “thank you.”

  “Do you know,” said Corinna when he had gone, “I think we have all gained more than we’ve given, here. I think we will all be profoundly altered by this.”

  I s
aid nothing.

  “Don’t you think so? Weren’t you completely altered when you first came out here?”

  “In some ways,” I said. “But in some ways I think people always stay the same.”

  We could see the taillights of the departing convoy, long after we had ceased to hear the sound. Betty, Henry, Debbie and I stood watching them, not knowing quite what to do now. I was trying to imagine what life was going to be like in Safila without Muhammad. He had decided to go with them.

  “Dears, I must tell you the most marvelous news,” said Betty.

  There was a pause while we tried to lift ourselves out of our thoughts.

  “What’s that, Bets old thing?” said Henry, after slightly too long. “Don’t tell me, you’re going to adopt the twins as well?”

  “No, silly,” said Betty coyly. “Well. Roy. You know Roy the sound engineer?”

  “What, the one you were talking with behind the caravan before he left?” said Debbie.

  “Charming fellow,” said Henry. “Bit of a Crispin Crashingbore at times, but by and large, absolute charmer.”

  “He’s asked me to marry him.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said.

  “Don’t like to throw a dampener on the proceedings,” said Henry. “Bloody marvelous, couldn’t be more delighted. But aren’t you already married, old sock?”

  “Oh, yes, of course I know. But when all this trouble with the famine’s sorted out here, and Dr. O’Rourke takes over I’m going back to England and start divorce proceedings, and start again with Roy.”

  “What’s that?” said Henry. Ahead of us a white djellaba was just visible, approaching with a limp.

  “Is that you, Muhammad?” I called.

  “No, it is an apparition,” came his voice.

  “I thought you were going to London to speak for your people.”

  He swung towards us on the stick. “I decided it was better to stay with my people here,” he said, breathing heavily. “We must fight from within, we must insist that we may cultivate, we must demand that food be kept in storage in our highlands, so that when disaster strikes again we need not leave our homes.”

  “Bloody hell, Muhammad,” said Henry. “Turned into a bloody saint-style person. Throw up your chance of fame and fortune to insist on the right to grow tomatoes.”

  “The shallow and flippant nature of your character never ceases to appall me,” said Muhammad, joining us where we stood and leaning an arm on Henry’s shoulder.

  The others set off back to the camp, and I drove back to pick up O’Rourke. As I reached the end of the rocky corridor and emerged onto the plain, the moon was coming up over the mountains, throwing a white light onto the scene. On the rising ground to my left, the dead were still being carried to the burial ground, the bodies were still being laid out and the graves still being dug. I could see the lamp still lit, over in O’Rourke’s clinic, where he was working. I walked over to him.

  “Have you nearly finished?”

  “Finished?” He could hardly keep his eyes open.

  “Come on. You’d better get some sleep. You’ve got to start again tomorrow.”

  I left him to finish off, and walked over to check on the feeding centers. When I came back he was packing up his equipment into boxes. I helped him load them into the jeep.

  As we drove out of the rocky corridor and down to the main road, the lights of the convoy were just visible in the distance heading for El Daman.

  “I feel like five kinds of shit driving away and leaving this,” said O’Rourke.

  “At least you’re coming back in the morning.”

  “It worked then, did it, your broadcast?” he said, with the quick smile.

  “Yes,” I said. “Bit late, but it worked.”

  After the broadcast there were three months of hard labor for us. The population of the camp doubled and there were journalists and cameras constantly at large. There were frequent rumors that Fergie was coming out on a mercy dash to bring royal jelly and ginseng, that Elizabeth Taylor was coming with Michael Jackson and a mini–fun fair, or that Ronnie and Nancy Reagan were planning to spend Christmas with us. Most of them proved to be false alarms, but still it was unsettling and nerve-racking for staff and refugees alike.

  All the publicity, time-consuming as it was, meant that questions were asked publicly. The European and American governments and the UN came in for a lot of flack. Even we had completely underestimated the sheer magnitude of the disaster in the highlands: for two months people continued to pour down in unimaginable numbers. The scene we had witnessed at Dowit was reenacted time and time again along the length of the border.

  Safila was better off than most of the camps because of the food from Charitable Acts and because we had raised our profile right from the start. The journalists always came to us first. We were in the center of the media spotlight and the big shots could not afford to let the situation get too bad for us. Elsewhere it was appalling.

  Safila played host to all sorts of political dignitaries and discussions about how to stop disaster happening again. The latest plan is that there are to be grain stores positioned and kept stocked all the way along the border, and an agreement with Abouti that the aid agencies can take food into Kefti if ever the harvest is threatened again. As Muhammad put it, “If ever that comes to pass then I will both marry Kate Fortune and become her hairdresser.” Stranger things have been known, of course.

  Betty stayed on for a couple of months to see us through the worst of it, then departed for a desk job in London and Roy the soundman. Parcels of candied peel and decomposing date and walnut loaf have started arriving with touching regularity. Linda asked to be sent back to Chad and left about six weeks ago. Henry became very serious and adult for about a month but is now once again preoccupied with the contents of Fenella Fridge and Sian’s Boris Bra.

  And O’Rourke: he’s asleep now, actually, in my bed under the mosquito net. I keep glancing up from the desk, watching him, in the glow from the hurricane lamp. He snores a bit, but I’m getting used to it.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  Also by Helen Fielding

  *

  BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON

  BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY

  helen fielding

  *

  causeceleb

  Viking

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

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  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182–190 Wairau Road,

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First American edition

  Published in 2001 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  13579108642

  Copyright © Helen Fielding, 1994 All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Fielding, Helen, date.

  Cause celeb / Helen Fielding.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-67
0-89450-8

  1. British—Africa, North—Fiction. 2. Africa, North—Fiction. 3. Food relief—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6056.I4588 C38 2001

  823'.914—dc21 00-043367

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Printed in the United States of America Set in Bembo

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  For my father, Michael Fielding

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks to Gillon Aitken, Dr. John Collee, Richard Coles, Adrienne Connors, Will Day of Comic Relief, Nellie Fielding and family, Paula, Piers and Sam Fletcher, Dr. Osma Galal, Georgia Garrett, Kathrin Grunig of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Roger Hutchings, Mick Imlah, Tina Jenkins, Paul Lariviere of UNHCR, John Lloyd, John Ma-grath of Oxfam, Judith Marshall of the Natural History Museum’s Department of Entomology, Harry Ritchie, Dr. John Seaman of Save the Children Fund, Jane Tewson of Comic Relief, Sarah Wallace, Jane Wellesley for help, advice, expertise and much kindness; and to Comic Relief, Médecin sans Frontières, Oxfam, the Red Cross, the Save the Children Fund and the Sudanese Commission of Refugees.

  With appreciation of Peter Gill’s A Year in the Death of Africa (Paladin), John Rowley’s Grasshoppers and Locusts: The Plague of the Sahel (Panos), Ben Jackson’s Poverty and the Planet (Penguin) and Nigel Twose’s Cultivating Hunger (Oxfam).

  And with special thanks to Richard Curtis.

  causeceleb

  CHAPTER One

  It used to seem extraordinary to me that someone like Henry could actually exist, extraordinary that a person could be transported into an environment so alien to his own, and remain so utterly unaffected by his surroundings. It was as if he had been coated with a very strong sealant, the sort of thing they use to paint on oceangoing yachts.

  Henry was spreading thick cut luxury marmalade from a Fort-num and Mason’s jar on a piece of Nambulan unleavened bread.

  “Got up this morning, didn’t Boris Believe it—family of eight outside my hut wanting to move their tent nearer the river. I said to the chap, ‘I thought this was a bloody refugee camp, not a holiday camp, but you go ahead, mate, by all means. Never mind the old malnutrition—you go for the view.’”