Sleeping with the Sultan

Three

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”

Dana and Sheikh Ashraf had chatted more amiably for a few minutes, and then, mercifully, the conversation had opened up and become general around the table. Now the meal, delicious by any standards and stupendous compared to the food served at most other charity functions she had attended, was finished. Coffee and liqueurs had been served.

Now it was down to business.

“We have a wonderful evening lined up for you tonight….”

Dana absently sipped her Turkish coffee and let the voice of the master of ceremonies wash over her. The organizer was introduced, an earnest, small man talking about the drought and the famine it had caused. And, knowing his audience, making much of President Ghasib’s deliberate mismanagement of Bagestan’s agriculture and his habit of pocketing charity funds.

“But we have negotiated with Ghasib’s government to put our own representatives on the ground in Bagestan, and management of the funds raised tonight will never leave our control until it is safe in the hands of those who need it most….”

“I wonder if that’s true,” Dana murmured.

“Very difficult to manage, I should have thought,” Sir John Cross agreed in a low voice. “However, what else can one do? I think we must assume that some of the money gets through to those who actually need it.”

“And while we may hope and believe that we’re getting closer by the day to the moment when Ghasib’s government will be history, our priority toni—”

The audience interrupted him with applause. Dana shook her head and glanced towards Sheikh Ashraf. He was looking very sober, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed. He was not applauding.

He turned his head and caught her eye with a dark, level gaze that seemed to probe and assess, and made her heart pound, but what he had gleaned from the examination, she couldn’t guess.

The organizer wisely kept it short and then the real star of the evening took the mike. Roddy Evans was a well-known and popular comedian, always in demand for events like this because of his ability to put people into a generous, good-natured mood and then get bundles of money out of them. Dana had always liked him.

“All right, I want every table to elect a captain, please!” he said, when his warm-up had reduced everyone to cheers, laughter and applause. “Just choose one person who’ll keep the rest of you in line this evening and take money from your wallets when instructed to do so….”

“I think it better be Dana!” someone announced. “If it comes to delivering money to the stage, she’s the one they’ll all want to see,” and the rest of the table quickly agreed.

“Sheikh Durran looks like a much better bet,” Dana protested, more out of curiosity to see how he would react than anything else. “He’s at least big enough to make any threat stick.”

“But one catches more flies with honey,” he said smoothly, waving a hand, and they all laughed and agreed.

Dana gave in with a threat.

“You’ll be sorry. Be afraid, be very afraid. I will soak you.”

Being captain turned out to be a not very onerous duty. At intervals throughout the evening, on instruction, Dana had to get a five-or ten-pound note from each of the people seated at her table and pass the money on to one of the roving hostesses. Most people were familiar with the format and had come with a supply of folding money as well as their chequebooks. In the meantime there was plenty of nonsense to keep people laughing and donating.

After a while came what most of the paying guests considered the high point—the auction. Tonight there were some real prizes. Top of the list was an all-expense-paid first-class two-week holiday at the Hotel Sheikh Daud in West Barakat, sponsored by Prince Karim.

But that would come near the end, as would the brand-new Subaru donated by Ahmed Bashir Motors. Before that there was some very exciting and somewhat drink-inspired bidding for weekends at country hotels, meals in restaurants, books, celebrity memorabilia, theatre tickets—whatever the organizers had been able to screw out of donors. The organizers here had clearly been top rank, and there was a stream of the kind of prizes that were often the top prize at lesser events.

Sprinkled among them were half a dozen “personal appearance” donations. Certain celebrities had agreed to spend an evening at a restaurant with whoever bid the highest for the honour. In the ruthless way of the entertainment industry, these prizes, like the others, were graded according to ascending value through the evening, because of the excitement the increasing amounts of money generated from the guests.

It was always interesting, and often salutary for those concerned, to see which celebrities were expected to bring in only a low bid, and which were saved to the end—with the other best prizes. The celebrities usually hated the whole process.

Most of such celebrities were women, and tonight all were, which Dana supposed was a comment on the way society was still run. She was always asked to participate in such an auction, and sometimes did, though always disliking it. If a man got you for too little, he treated you with contempt. If he paid a lot, often he thought he should be able to expect a little more than your face over the dinner table. Or, worst of all, he invited a whole horde of his friends along and expected you to act as his hostess for the evening.

But good charity organizers were ruthless, and this one had been prime, and Dana had given in.

Her name hadn’t been called yet. This was making her nervous, because although the early names didn’t usually get up in front of the crowd during the auction, the later names were often asked to do so. This let you in for even more potential humiliation if your drawing power wasn’t as strong as the organizers had assumed.

Jenny’s name had come up early. She stayed in her seat, but she had got a very respectable two thousand pounds from a real estate agent whose company name was called out at least eight times during the prolonged bidding by the savvy Roddy. Dana had expected to be the next celebrity auctioned after an interval of theatre tickets and a year’s membership to a top gym, but she wasn’t.

Nor was she the next, nor the next.

She began to feel really uncomfortable. She was not a movie star, after all; they were the ones who pulled in the really big sums. She was a mere soap star with only a couple of film credits, and if she went up after high bids and scored much less than the previous celeb, it would be embarrassing.

Next up was a gorgeous, big-breasted but brain-dead television presenter, who was called up onstage for the auction and who, after a long and well-hyped bidding war between a Harley Street cosmetic surgeon and a new car dealer, pulled nearly five thousand pounds. It was a figure which impressed the whole room.

A set of golf clubs came next, but it was clear all the real emotional heat this time had become focussed on the human portion of the auction. A very well-known middle-aged movie actress who had been included in last year’s Honours List and was now a Dame raised just over six thousand pounds. Dana started to feel very uncomfortable. Why had this woman been listed before her? It was ridiculous. Dana didn’t have anything like her pulling power.

Maybe Dana’s name had just been forgotten by the organizer. She certainly hoped so.

“It’s a bit like a slave auction,” the journalist across the table observed dispassionately, making Dana cringe even more. “I wonder why they do it?”

“Because we are made to feel, by whoever is pressuring us, that it is a small thing to ask and everyone else has agreed and we are selfish and smug if we refuse,” Dana said clearly.

And just then Roddy cried, “…a dinner date at the fabulous Riverfront Restaurant with our very own favourite bitch, Reena! Otherwise known as Brick Lane star Dana Morningstar! And she’s here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, so will you come up here, Reena, I mean, Dana, and let the folks take a look at the merchandise?”

Dana lifted her eyebrows at the journalist as one of the ever-present assistants dashed in to hold her chair and escort her to the stage amid an enthusiastic round of applause and cheers.

She smiled and twinkled her fingers as she stepped up under the lights, and wondered whether her dress was opaque or transparent at the moment.

“…and together you’ll dine on caviar, lobster and champagne provided by the fabulous Riverfront Restaurant, which as you all know is one of London’s most fabulous eateries! It’s moored right on the Thames, and you’ll be driven home afterwards in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce provided by Launcelot Limos!

“So now, what am I bid for a delightful evening in Dana Morningstar’s company? You might even learn from her the secret of Reena’s demise before it’s broadcast! Do I hear five hundred, ladies and gentlemen?”

“Five hundred!”

“Oooh, quick off the mark there, Harold. That’s Harold McIntosh, ladies and gentlemen, not short of a bob or two when you run a Mayfair car dealership, now, are you? Five hundred, do I hear—”

“One thousand!”

“Ah, ha! Well, this promises to be a very exciting auction, ladies and gentlemen, not reticent at all, are we? That’s a thousand bid from—”

“Ten thousand pounds.”

It wasn’t a shout, but somehow the voice cut through the chatter and was heard by everyone. There was a collective gasp all over the room. Not only because of the enormous leap in the bidding, but because of the quality of the voice. Firm, assured, brooking no interference. And not at all the worse for drink.

Sheikh Ashraf Durrani’s voice.

Dana felt her cheeks flame. She bit her lip. She had never had to work so hard to force a smile in her life, but she managed it. She even managed to fake a little wide-eyed, excited grimace.

“Ten thousand pounds, ladies and gentlemen! Well, now we’re getting serious. And who is going to take that higher, I wonder? Jeremy, accountant to the stars, you’re in this league, do I hear a raise on ten thousand for an evening with Dana Gorgeous Morningstar? What about you, George—”

“Ten thousand one hundred!” cried a slightly inebriated voice.