AT THE ROSE BALL

Sousa Jamba goes in

search of the upper class

I HAVE heard many unpleasant things said about the British upper class. I had been told that they thought of ignorance as a virtue, had excessive greed for money, were snobs, and chortled in a repulsive manner. Many of the things I have heard about them are, of course, not true. People derive dubious pleasure from attributing negative qualities to those whom they perceive to be their social betters. I went to the Rose Ball in Grosvenor House Hotel to to see this social species that I had heard so much about and yet had had no contact with.

I felt uneasy. I wondered whether mine would be the only black face in the hall. Was I going to be, as an African proverb says, the skeleton at the feast? A friend of mine had told me not to worry. To be black, he said, was in fashion nowadays. There will be other blacks, most possibly Africans, around,' he said earnestly. I had never looked so smart and digni- fied in my life. I was dressed in a dinner suit. As I walked to the hotel a man rushed to me and asked me for an autograph. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'are you a famous boxer, footballer, pop star or what?' I dipped my hands into the pockets and said in a stately tone: 'I am a famous writer!' He nodded and left without letting me sign the autograph. I felt bogus in the suit.

I went to meet my companion, a charm- ing, tall girl from the Spectator advertising department called Anna Head. Anna was dressed in a black top and a long, purple Skirt which flared from the knees down- wards. She knew her way about. I followed her sheepishly. We went through the list of the names of those attending the ball. My name was not there. We had to wait a bit before we were allowed into the hall. A slender girl who I felt exuded innocence joined us. She spoke timidly and looked away when I gazed into her clear eyes. She said she was studying history at London University. The con- versation veered towards the pieces that I have done for The Spectator. Soon, I was on my favourite topic — the agonies of an African artist. The two girls listened atten- tively. I was enjoying emptying my heart's contents when a corpulent man approached us and said loudly: 'Are you the man wearing Dominic Lawson's dinner suit?'

'Indeed I am,' I answered.

The man is a contributor to The Specta- tor. I fell silent. Four beautiful girls passed near us. One caught the attention of the Spectator contributor. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'are you Ophelia?'

The girl, who was plump and dressed in an orange dress, said: 'No. I am not Ophelia.' The man cleared his throat, then he beamed at her saying: 'Everybody here looks the same. But you look like Ophe- lia.' She grinned and went into the hall. The man went into the hall, too.

The feast began. I had expected to find the kind of garishness one associates with stupendous parties. On the other hand, the hall had been decorated in a manner that created a cosy atmosphere. Chandeliers hung majestically from the ceiling. The tables were filled with plates, glasses and bottles of wine. The waiters were mostly Filipinos, who, I was told, are very obe- dient.

The men were all in dinner suits and the women wore the most impressive dresses I have ever seen. Some of the dresses were in the shapes of flowers; others butterflies. Some women wore dresses which had wire frames inside them. They had to be helped to walk.

I sat between Anna and a charming French girl called Aurelie. Next to Anna was a girl not more than 16 whose parents had come from Hungary. She was dressed in a white top and a cross between knicker- bockers and a skirt which inflated like a huge balloon when she sat down. I was told that she had an air pump under the skirt. Earlier, someone had told me that balls were nowadays not exclusively upper-class. Parvenus, he said, flocked there, too.

The presence of two foreigners made me less uneasy. I did not, of course, think myself on the same footing as the girls from the French and Hungarian aristocracy. Most of the people on our table were teenagers, still doing their GCSE. I turned to Aurelie. She said she was studying Russian and had once lived in Africa. Her grandfather, she said, had been a famous French writer. I had never heard of him.

Aurelie was quick to tell me that the British upper class were a superficial lot. She said she found the whole event worth- less and boring. She had only come be- cause of her English cousin who belonged to a sub-committee of the organising com- mittee which decided who sat beside whom. Her cousin, a plump, frolicsome girl, sat at the other end of the table giggling as a boy whispered into her ear. I asked Aurelie what she thought most people at the table were talking about.

Aurelie looked around and said with a dismissive gesture: 'They are not discussing anything special. You see the English are not intellectuals. They are superficial.' I looked around again. A television crew was filming the event. The sound man was inserting the boom between partners who were chatting, to capture what conversa- tion he could. When I told what Aurelie had said about the British to an English friend he was incensed. 'Now you see why we have always wanted to go to war with the French,' he said.

As far as Aurelie was concerned, we were surrounded by philistines — 'roast beef, she called them — so she insisted on having an edifying discussion with me. A true daughter of the zeitgeist, she said: 'What do you think of Mr Gorbachev? I have read his book Perestroika, and be- lieve him.' She was sanguine about the changes in the Soviet Union. At one point, I began to find her a bit boring. Watching myself act, I proposed marriage to her.

Aurelie pretended not to have heard me and dashed off to the dance floor, for the band was now playing.

Anna took me to the floor to dance. After several attempts to dance holding each other failed — I kept stepping on her toes — we went solo. Anna bopped with a nostalgic expression on her face. I only Wished the dinner suit had been mine for I would have performed a dance no one had ever seen before.

Some of the dancers were quite old, so old that I wondered whether an ambulance or a doctor was nearby. Most of the young were not present on the floor on which we were dancing. I was told that the young were at some other floor. 'This is for the crumblies and crinklies,' one of them said. We went to the floor where the yuckies were stomping to Michael Jackson. Others sat nearby, caressing. Then there was a fashion show. A male and female model kissed each other passionately; the audi- ence applauded. Anna took me to play tombola. I won four bottles of alcohol-free lager; she a cigarette lighter. I wondered whether the lager had really been alcohol- free because after drinking the four bottles I felt a strong desire to put the roses from a nearby jar into Aurelie's hands. We left at once.