“I’m not looking at you like anything. Except in admiration. That… well, that could be a really great thing to do. D’you think I could?”
“With a lot of help, yes, I’m sure you could.”
Georgia felt as if a light had gone on in her head, shining into the dark, ugly memories and the rotting guilt, slowly but steadily shrinking them away. She could do something-actually do something to help all those people. It wouldn’t bring anyone back; it wouldn’t restore damaged muscles or bones or nervous systems; but it would be so, so much better than nothing.
She decided to talk to Linda about it.
Linda was cautiously enthusiastic; she thought it was a great idea… “But you really have to do it properly, Georgia. Think long and hard before you get into it, because it could turn into a monster. If you’re going to set up a charity, then you have to get it registered, appoint some trustees… I know that sounds like a lot of work and rather daunting, but people will be much more willing to help if it sounds official and not like a lot of kids raising a bit of money for fun. And it’s got to be done well. The venue alone will be a nightmare to find and fund, and you’ll have to scale everything to it. No use getting the Stones to agree to play and then offering them a rehearsal hall in Staines. Sorry, I don’t mean to discourage you. I just don’t want you getting into something you can’t cope with.”
Georgia said she was sure she could cope with it, and that she didn’t actually envisage getting the Stones; but a few enquiries revealed the extent of the venue problem. Hiring anywhere at all was hugely expensive and would wipe out any profit at a stroke; something radical was clearly required.
Linda said she’d sound a few people out, that she knew quite a lot of musicians, and maybe Georgia might even consider having a couple of dramatic items in the programme. The few people she’d sounded were cautiously interested; Georgia didn’t want to ask anyone yet on Moving Away-she had enough to cope with there-but it would be worth a try when it was over; Merlin, she was sure, knew a lot of people in the music business.
She could see it was all going to take a long time; it needed intensive long-term planning. But an optimism had gripped her; she felt absolutely certain something would turn up-in fact, she said this so often that Anna had nicknamed her Mrs. Micawber…
The other person she talked to about it was Emma; she and Emma had seriously bonded at Mary’s wedding, got quite drunk and danced together. Emma said she thought it was a great idea. She agreed with Linda that it might be better to raise the money specifically for the hospital; she said she didn’t think she’d be much use herself, but when Georgia said she was forming a committee and that she was hoping Alex would come on it, she told Georgia to count her in: “Only if you think I could help, of course. I’ve… well, I’ve got a bit of spare time at the moment, so I could write letters for you, stuff like that, if you like. My mum works for a school, and she’s always being asked to go on fund-raising committees. Only small local ones, of course, but the principle’s pretty much the same. She might have some ideas.”
Georgia said she was beginning to think quite small and local herself: “It’s hopeless thinking we can do something big in London; it’ll cost squillions, and we’d never get the sort of people we’d need. I mean, the crash was local, and the hospital’s local, and people are bound to remember it. And there must be places in Swindon, for instance-it’s not that small-or Reading, maybe. Anyway, it’s early days. The great thing is to keep trucking, as Dr. Pritchard calls it… I’m going to start writing letters.”
She and Emma were both very intrigued by the relationship between Linda and Alex, which had become extremely obvious after Mary’s wedding.
“It’s a match made in heaven, really,” said Georgia. “I mean, Linda’s so lonely and needy…”
“Is she? She doesn’t come across lonely and needy…”
“No, but that’s her whole problem. Ballsy women, especially good-looking ones, just scare men off. Anyway, then there’s Dr. Pritchard, also lonely, you say…”
“Well, pretty miserable a lot of the time. His wife is an ace cow. She’s literally turfed him out of the house, sold it more or less over his head, as far as I can make out. He’s had to move into some cruddy flat in Swindon; it’s so not fair. They’ve got some nice kids, though. Like fourteen, fifteen, that sort of age. How’d Linda be with kids, do you think?”
“Mmm… she’s been pretty cool to me. We’ve had a few fights, but we’ve always worked it out.”
“Yes, but you’re twenty-two,” said Emma. “And she’s not having a relationship with your dad. Well, we’ll have to hope for the best. I love Alex, I really do; he’s such a sweetheart-all bark and really no bite at all. And he does seem much happier these days. I shall be very sad to leave him.”
“Which is when?”
“Oh… January, February time. Depends what I can get.”
“You’d better not go to some hospital in Scotland or something,” said Georgia. “Not until after the concert, anyway.”
“Right now Scotland looks quite appealing,” said Emma with a sigh. “Far away from London as possible, that’s what I want.”
She didn’t tell Georgia why, and Georgia didn’t ask. She could see something was hurting Emma a lot, and equally that she didn’t want to talk about it. Which usually meant in Georgia’s experience that she’d been dumped. Men were such idiots. Who’d dump someone as lovely as Emma?
The days when Alex mooded around, as Emma put it, and shouted were the days when he was undergoing severe anxieties over his relationship with Linda. She was gorgeous, she was sexy, she seemed really to care about him; on the other hand he had vowed he would not enter another relationship with anyone who didn’t totally understand the demands of his career and profession. Linda might understand them, but she was hardly going to give them priority. If it came to a conflict between a first night or a major audition, and a dinner with other doctors and their wives, the dinner would not win. They had already had a couple of run-ins over a South African trip, funded by a pharmaceutical company, which she’d persuaded him to accept. Having promised to be totally accommodating with the spousal programme-“I cannot believe there are things called that”-she had said there was no way she was going to go on a boat trip to Robben Island-where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned-without him, or go on what she called an obscene trip to one of the townships.
“Patronising, utterly ghastly, I wouldn’t even contemplate it.”
“I seem to remember your saying that the tourist trade benefited the country.”
“I’m sure it does. I just don’t think sitting in an air-conditioned car and looking graciously around a series of shantytowns benefits the inhabitants very much. I’m not going to go, Alex, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Linda, you seem to be embarking on this trip in a rather different spirit from what you’d promised. I really don’t think it’s viable on this basis, and I don’t see how we can go.”
“Alex, that’s crap.”
“It is not crap. I said I didn’t like any of it in principle, that I never had, and you talked me round…”
“I did not talk you round!”
“Oh, really? I seem to remember a lot of talk about how it wouldn’t help anyone, my sulking in Swindon, while someone else went in my place…”
“I do dislike the way you play back everything I say to you. All right, then let’s not go. Let’s not do anything nice. You jut sit in your bed-sit and contemplate your navel.”