Грэм Мастертон - Famine

Peter Kaiser had spent five harassed hours mapping out contingency plans for handling all the money the appeal was going to bring in, and he had taken up so much of Karen’s time with typing and telephoning that she hadn’t even been able to get away for a swim. The fund had now been sub-divided into geographical regions – east, central, and west – so that contributions could be handled more efficiently. It would also make the money more difficult to trace, when accounting time came. Karen had spent most of the morning calling San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, briefing Peter’s regional office staff. None of them had been particularly helpful and happy about being disturbed on a Sunday, even this Sunday.

Ed had felt tense all day. He had woken just before it was light, and he had sat out on his balcony, wrapped in his bathrobe, smoking a cigar and watching the grey waters of the lake. Behind him, in his bedroom, Della McIntosh had lain sleeping on his bed, her red hair spread out over the pillow, her knees drawn up like a child. She had knocked on his door at midnight, and he had let her in without a word. They had said nothing to each other at all – nothing about motives or betrayal or politics. They had made love three times, and the last time she had sat on top of him, while he had reached up with his hands and cradled her heavy breasts. They had kissed once, almost a chaste kiss, and then slept.

After breakfast, Ed had watched the television technicians for a while. Then he had swum up and down Shearson’s triangular pool. He had thought of calling Season in Los Angeles, but somehow he had felt disinclined. There was too much on his mind. Della was no substitute for Season, but Season was so much more complicated. The day was sunny but cool.

At three o’clock, after everybody had sat around the lunch table for a gargantuan lobster salad, and Shearson had retired to his suite of rooms to doze and belch for an hour in private, the TV director had introduced Ed to his make-up lady and his continuity girl and the silent, elegantly-dressed black prompter who was going to hold up his short speech for him on large idiot boards. Then Ed had been given a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans to put on, his hair had been washed and blow-dried, and a small touch of blush had been rubbed along his cheekbones.

‘We want you to look healthy and rural,’ said the director.

‘Even though I’m destitute, and my crops have been wiped out?’ asked Ed.

‘Listen – people don’t want to be reminded of The Grapes of Wrath. They don’t want haggard sharecroppers. They want a healthy, friendly, young fellow who’s been hit by a tragic bolt from the blue.’

‘Would you like me to endorse somebody’s breakfast cereal at the same time?’ Ed had asked, sarcastically.

‘Just read what’s on the cards and sound as if you mean it,’ retorted the director. ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t smile.’

Ed was placed against a background of bare wooden floorboards and walls with only Andrew Wyeth’s severe painting of Dil Huey Farm behind him. The director had asked him to run through his words, and he had haltingly obliged. What had made it worse was that he had known all along he was never going to say them.

I’m a Kansas wheat farmer. You’ve just heard Senator Shearson Jones asking for help on our behalf. All I want to say is that in Kansas we’re not the kind to go begging. We wouldn’t be asking for your assistance if we hadn’t been struck by the worst natural crop disaster for nigh on forty years. It’s hit us hard, and it’s hit us fast, and there was no way in the world we could have stopped it.

I want you to contribute to the Kansas Blight Crisis Appeal because my fellow wheat farmers and I want to go on growing wheat for this great country of ours. Every dollar you give will be sowed in the Kansas soil like a seed, and out of it we’ll be able to harvest a new economic strength and fine cereal foods for future generations of Americans.

I give you this personal promise. We’re tough, hardworking people. We don’t normally ask for handouts. And with the donation you send us, we’ll work ten times as hard as usual to make sure that we get back on our feet again fast. Thank you for listening. My name’s Ed Hardesty.

‘This is gibberish,’ said Ed, as the lighting technician came across the floor and tilted his head slightly to one side.

‘Face that way,’ said the technician. ‘If you face the way you were, your nose looks shapeless.’

‘If I face the other way, I can’t read the gibberish.’

‘You may think it’s gibberish,’ said the director. ‘But if you write sense for television, it comes out sounding weird. The first criterion is it has to sound like sense. Whether it is or not, that’s irrelevant.’

‘All right,’ said Ed. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t create any difficulties. If he created difficulties, they might not ask him to speak on the broadcast. The lighting technician switched off the spots, and he saw swimming coloured shapes in front of his eyes.

A few minutes before air time, Shearson Jones appeared, wearing a dark grey suit that would have swamped Orson Welles. He lowered himself carefully into a leather-backed throne of a chair, and the make-up lady fussed around him and mopped away the perspiration which had popped out on his forehead and around his mouth.

‘These lights are goddamned hot,’ he complained. ‘I feel like I’m losing pounds, just sitting here.’

Ed waited in the cool and the shadow behind the lights. He watched quietly as the television people straightened Shearson’s lapels, and shifted a potted yucca a few inches to the left, so that it wouldn’t look as if it was growing out of Shearson’s head. He was so tense and intent on what was going on that he didn’t notice Della approach him from behind until she put her arm around him.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Are you nervous?’

He looked down at her. She was dressed in blue jeans, a pink T-shirt, and no bra. Her nipples showed through the thin cotton.

There’s no reason to be nervous,’ said Ed. ‘It’s all written out on the cards for me. All I have to do is read it.’

‘But you’re still nervous?’

‘A little.’

She glanced around, to see if there was anybody standing close. Then she said, ‘I overheard you.’

‘You overheard me?’ he asked her. ‘What are you talking about? When?’

‘I overheard you talking to Karen on the balcony.’

Ed looked at her closely. She didn’t look away. Her eyes searched into his just as deeply, and with just as much intensity, as his were searching into hers.

‘What did you hear?’ he asked her.

‘Everything,’ she said.

‘You heard what I said about this broadcast?’

She nodded.

‘You haven’t told Shearson? Or have you?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Why not? You silenced Dr Benson quick enough. I called him this morning and he’s been taken into a clinic to dry out again.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry ?’ Ed said. ‘That guy spent years weaning himself off the bottle. Now you’ve probably ruined his life, as well as his career.’

‘Yes,’ said Della. ‘But you can believe me when I tell you he’s going to be fully compensated.’

‘By whom? Blue Cross doesn’t cover you for alcoholism.’

Della reached out and held Ed’s wrist, the gentle but persuasive way that a friend does. ‘I’m sorry about Dr Benson,’ she said. ‘But there’s something a whole lot more important at stake here. In fact, it’s so important that I have to ask you not to say anything today except what’s on the cards.’

‘Are you kidding me?’ demanded Ed. ‘Do you have any idea what’s going on? What Shearson Jones is doing? Do you have any idea what kind of a disaster we’re facing here? I mean – every crop in every state is blighted. Can you understand what that’s going to mean?’