Eating Crow (21 page)

I folded up the paper and gave it back to them. “Franky, Alex, do what you feel you have to do, but please don’t go overboard. Promise me.”

Franky said, “The response will be proportionate,” which meant for the most part that all vehicles in which I traveled, including the jet, were checked over before I got into them, and all post was x-rayed twice before Francine and Alice opened it. This I could live with as long as it didn’t get in the way of the job at hand, which now shifted into another gear.

I flew to Drogheda to apologize to the Irish taoiseach for Oliver Cromwell’s bloody rampages through Ireland. In a moving ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City, I apologized to a group of saffron-robed monks for America’s ill-judged adventures in Vietnam. I headed south to Australia and a fading sunset at Ayer’s Rock. There I told the appalling story of my nineteenth-century ancestor Jeremiah Welton-Smith and his vicious treatment of the Aborigines who lived on his sheep station, before offering a complete and unreserved apology to leaders of the community for the deprivations their people had suffered at the hands of white Europeans. On a frantic whistle-stop tour of the Indian subcontinent, I apologized in turn to India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh for the general mess the British had made of independence and partition, and then I went even further east to the city of Nanking, where I apologized on behalf of the British, the Americans, and the French for the ruinous Opium Wars.

They were happy times. I was getting to travel the world, meet interesting people, and apologize to them. I was being treated as if I were possessed of particularly special insight, and as the successful apologies piled up, I came to see why this might appear to be so. Luckily, I also had a girlfriend who kept me grounded and in touch with the real me. Around Jennie I never felt self-conscious about my love handles.

The idea that there could be any other benefits or pleasures to be taken from this job seemed ludicrous, but that just shows how even the most expansive of imaginations can fail. One morning Jennie came in clutching a letter, and this one hadn’t been ripped from a student’s notebook and it wasn’t written in purple ink.

“Sweetheart,” she said, handing it over, “you’ve just graduated.”

A
s a kid I harbored rock star ambitions. I had no singing voice. I played no instruments and I had no plans to take lessons. Nevertheless I presumed that alone among my peer group, I was the person most suited to the job of rock god. In this I was exactly the same as every other teenager. Later, when I established myself as the star of Mrs. Barrington’s Northills Brigade, I concluded that my future lay not onstage but behind it, as chef to a rock star, which I felt represented a precociously realistic assessment of my own talents. Having made that career choice, I set about identifying the artists who warranted a place in my record collection according not to my tastes, but to theirs. I was interested only in musicians and singers who had an interest in food and wine and who might, therefore, be worthy later on of my services.

I scoured the pages of inky must-read music magazines like the
New Musical Express
and
Melody Maker
for snippets about the gastronomic adventures of rock stars. Gossip about lobster and champagne was not good enough. Anybody could waste money on those. It was a hollow victory of hard cash over ignorance. I was looking for the unlikely individuals who understood the importance of visceral pleasures and they were a tougher find, although they did present themselves occasionally. For example, in one
NME
interview I discovered that David Bowie liked to relax by reading Italian cookbooks, and that he made his own pasta from an exclusive brand of durum wheat flour which was flown to him wherever he happened to be in the world, from a small shop in Bologna. This was fortuitous because Bowie had, by general consent, just executed a remarkable return to form with the release of his album
Let’s Dance.
It was cool to say you were a Bowie fan; cooler still, I decided, if your fandom was grounded in true Bowie gastronomic esoterica (“Yeah, he makes his own game and porcini tortellini, actually. He’s a master of the Trattorina Pasta Machine”). Similarly I discovered that Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd had an impressive wine collection, and this too was okay, because
The Wall
was still regarded as a must-own album.

Other passions were less easy to sustain. For a long while I was a huge fan of the Rolling Stones, which had a certain camp retro-chic, even in the mideighties. My interest was based on an interview Mick Jagger had given to
Melody Maker
in which he revealed he was building a collection of fine clarets and ports. Later, however, I discovered he was buying these solely as an investment for his kids. There was no way I could sustain our relationship after that. I sold all the albums and tore down the Jagger posters. And it was simply impossible to claim you liked Chris de Burgh, however many cases of premier cru Bordeaux he happened to have ferreted away under that Irish castle of his.
The Lady in Red
was a crime against pop and no volume of Château Margaux could mitigate the offense.

In time, of course, I came to understand that some recordings were great regardless of the diet of those who made them. Somehow I don’t think the Clash ate well before recording
London Calling.
It is a hungry record, fueled by a knowing emptiness in the pit of the stomach. Indeed I realized that most rock stars eat badly until they retire and have no need of a chef, the intricate orders for backstage food merely a part of the continuous power games that these people play rather than anything linked to appetite.

And yet I never lost my rock star fantasy. It still played in the mental movie theater that is always open somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind. Sometimes, though, fantasies get to become reality, if only for a moment. The letter Jennie had handed me suggested just such a moment was upon me.

“U2 want me onstage with them?”

“It’s the honor all international statesmen dream of.”

I was incredulous. “Bono himself has asked me to join him onstage?”

“That’s what it says. I’ve been talking to his people. They’ve got Jimmy Carter penciled in to join them in Detroit, and Bob Geldof’s going to play half a set in New York. They’re suggesting you for Philadelphia.”

“Tell them yes.”

Franky and Alex were not pleased.

“There are security considerations.”

“Franky, a former president of the United States is doing this.”

“But we have had specific violent threats against you.”

“No. We have had one letter from a knucklehead with only half his share of chromosomes who probably lost his virginity to his own sister.”

“Our job is to look after your safety, sir.”

Jennie intervened. “Boys, Marc will be accepting the invitation. Make the arrangements.” Jennie understood. You did not say no to Bono.

On a close evening in late summer when the air smelled sweetly of dust and gasoline, we drove in a convoy of stretch Lincolns through the superheated, low-rise streets of South Philadelphia to Veterans Stadium. The band was already onstage when we arrived (my one concession to the boys’ security worries) and we could feel the growl and rumble of the bass lines echoing toward us through the belly of the building. Over and above the bass came an endless roar, like a ceaseless wind blowing through a ceaseless forest. It was the noise of seventy-five thousand people in one place for one reason. Everything about this stadium was monumental: the great, black, sooty walls of the corridors they led me through, each wide enough to accommodate an articulated truck; the huge shadowed ramps and vents; the endless coils and lines of duct-taped cables and that crushing sound which did not so much increase in volume as we neared its source as stretch out to hold us.

When I reached the edge of the stage, there was a dam-burst of crystal clear sound; of guitar and drum and bass and crowd. U2 were finishing a track, something from
Achtung Baby
which, to my embarrassment, I only half recognized. As the final chords played, Bono did that careful backward walk upstage which rock stars do, booted heels lifted high as dressage horses might, to avoid an unseen trip or fall. He looked toward me in the wings, his eyes shielded by heavy shades, and nodded. It was the boost I needed. He was holding the stage with comfort and familiarity and soon, he was saying, I would do the same. I heard him introduce me with a simple elegant sentence about “the planet’s conscience” which made me blush, and that was it. I was on. He handed me a radio mike, and placing one arm up and around my shoulder (he really is terribly short), he led me out to the end of a runway built deep into the crowd.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Chief Apologist of the United Nations.”

Night was falling over Philadelphia. I remember the deep, clean ultramarine of the sky and the starbursts of the stadium lights and the epileptic flash of cameras rippling across the crashing waves of faces. I admit I froze there for a few seconds, my feet placed square on that salient of stage, looking out at the mass of humanity stretching away from me and up high above me. At last I opened my mouth, and powering into the microphone until I feared the sound might distort, I said the one thing everybody in that stadium wanted to hear me say:

“I’m so sorry.”

Back came the roar, echoing toward me:

“WE’RE SORRY TOO!”

It was a truly deafening moment, as my dad might have said.

There was a press conference afterward, held in a grisly basement hospitality room, where the usual bunch of reporters asked me the usual bunch of questions about how I felt. This was only to be expected. I was, after all, a spokesman for emotion now; I was the crown prince of authenticity, the high priest of empathy.

“Mr. Basset, how did it feel?”

“It felt good, Janice.”

“Did the response surprise you, Marc?”

“Mike, I’m constantly surprised. I’ve been surprised every day since I took on this job.”

“You mean you didn’t expect this kind of response?”

“What can I tell you, Dick? I hadn’t been onstage with U2 before. I had no idea what to expect.”

“How have your old friends back in London responded to the global interest in you?”

It was the solid, rounded Englishness of the accent amid all those American voices that threw me. I looked to where the question had come from. There was the thick black hair. There was the lush lipstick. There was the familiar uniform of black and gray.

I opened my eyes wide and said, “Lynne? What the hell are you doing here?”

We went off together to the dressing room which had been set aside for me, where I poured her a glass of wine from the huge array of bottles that had been set out. She looked at the crowded table.

“You expecting a lot of people?”

“No. Nobody, actually. They always set out this much stuff, wherever I go. Maybe they think I’m an alcoholic. A bit embarrassing, really.”

“But not that embarrassing.”

“No, I suppose not. Getting used to it.” We stared at the bottles. I said, “So tell me, why are you here?”

“New job,” she said cheerily. “After we … after you went to New York, I decided it was time for a bit of a career change. Reckoned there was a vacancy in journalism, what with you having left the business, so I got myself onto one of the British Council’s journals.”

“And they sent you to a U2 gig?”

She smiled sheepishly. “No. I’m covering a British Council event over in Chicago and I heard you were coming on so I wangled a ticket and a press pass.”

“I’m glad you did. It’s good to see you.”

She looked deep into her glass. “Marc, I just wanted to say, you know, I’m sorry—”

“Hey, somebody’s apologizing to me.”

“Shut up, boy. I wanted to say I’m sorry I doubted you. It looks like you’ve done some brilliant stuff. The slavery apology, the thing in Ireland, that set piece down in Australia. Pretty cool.”

“Thank you.”

“I could do with a little less of the weeping.”

“Well, you know. Sort of comes with the territory.”

“It’s just good to see you happy.”

“Despite the tears?”

“Yeah. A very clever trick, crying a lot and being happy at the same time.”

“Thank you. I am happy. It’s all a bit weird but, you know—fun. How about you? A new job. That’s great, isn’t it?”

She looked doubtful for a second, as if she were mentally reviewing unreliable evidence. She nodded her head just a little too vigorously. “Yes. Terrific. I’m having a ball, actually. Lots of fun. Lots of travel, interesting people. I’ve seen a bit of Luke back in London, by the way. He’s coming out here soon, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. In a couple of weeks.”

“Terrific.”

“I hope so. Should be good.”

A deathly silence fell between us, broken only by the muffled roar from the stage above us. “Listen, Lynne. The way we broke up was…”

She waved me away. “Stuff happens, Marc. You had to do what you had to do and—”

“I know, but …”

There was a knock at the door and Franky put his head round. “Transport is waiting, brother. Got to go.”

“Okay, Franky. Give us a second. Lynne, it looks like I’ve got to—”

“No, of course. Just wanted to say hi and now I’ve said hi and I’ll—”

“Come on, walk with me up to the car. Security can slip you back into the stadium from there.”

Together we trudged up through the corridors, flanked by Alex and Franky, with me muttering embarrassed inanities about how silly it felt sometimes to have so many people on my staff. We had just turned a corner, bringing my car into view where it was idling by a service bay, and I was about to say something to Lynne about how she should get in touch the next time she was in New York, when Alex shouted, “Threat at three o’clock!” Everything happened with furious speed after that. Franky all but picked me up, rushed me the last ten yards to the car, and chucked me bodily through the door, which slammed shut behind me. To my right I heard girlish shrieks and saw the glint of chromium spinning away from me in the gloom.

As the car sped away I managed to pull myself up on the backseat and look out the tinted rear window just in time to see three women in wheelchairs rolling away down a ramp and Alex standing over them, his pistol drawn.

Satesh snapped around from the front passenger seat. “What was all that about?”

“Sir, we identified a threat to the Chief Apologist, sir,” Franky said from behind the wheel.

“Shit. Really? Are you okay, Marc?”

“I’m fine. Just a bit shaken.”

“Suppose that means you didn’t get to talk to the members of the US Women’s Olympic Paraplegic Team that we had arranged to meet you on your way out? What a shame.”

I looked at Franky witheringly.

“Sir, we thought we had identified … I mean we had identified …” His words drew to a halt.

I looked back out the rear window at the retreating hulk of Veterans Stadium, floodlit now against the night sky. There was one image that stuck in my mind. It was not the women in their wheelchairs, turning around and around and around like riders on a fairground waltzer, or even Alex, jaw tensed, both hands gripping the butt of his gun. It was Lynne staring back after the car with that old look on her face. The familiar one that said, Just what kind of fool are you?