Free Vanished Years by Rupert Everett Page B

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 thepoint 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 anddepressive, possibly dyslexic. (A good modern condition is always a crowd pleaser.) He will need a nice,