There was quite a long silence when I had finished. Jay picked up a pencil and looked at its point, then put it down again. The foreign secretary stretched back in his chair and studied the ceiling. The chancellor fiddled with his Blackberry. Then Davidson said, ‘Peter, you need to get out more.’
I stared at him. I couldn’t believe anyone in his position could make such an infantile remark, although my knowledge of Davidson should perhaps have prepared me for such a possibility. It was as if the last fifteen minutes had counted for nothing all.
I was about to say something I might have regretted when Jay looked up and said kindly, ‘Peter, this is visionary stuff.
Just like you. But it needs thinking through a bit more carefully. There are some religious and political issues here that need sensitive handling. And you’ve got a lot on your plate just now. You’ve been working very hard. You need to ease up a bit. Maybe take a short break. And then we’ll come back to this, perhaps. Maybe kick it around a bit more. The secretary of state for culture, media and sport ought to be involved in the debate. Maybe education as well. I’ll ask them both to give it some thought. But for now, great as it is, I think we have to park your idea. We’re pretty much committed to going down a particular road in the Middle East and it would be difficult to change that very much without people beginning to ask why we’d started down it in the first place.’
For some reason, as Jay finished speaking my eyes filled with tears. I stood up and went to the alcove where the bottles were kept and poured myself a glass of water with my back to the table, then wiped my eyes with the back of my hand while nobody could see my face. I felt rejected. I felt my vision had been so clear, so perfect, so lateral. Why could nobody else see that this was the way to go? The foreign secretary was speaking.
‘Nevertheless, boss,’ he said, ‘Peter’s got a point. We may have an excellent set of policies in the Middle East, and as you well know I have always endorsed and supported them to the hilt. Moreover, we know that in the long run we will succeed. We know militant Islam is being rolled back and that democratic consumer societies are springing up to replace the old theocracies. House prices are rising again in Fallujah. And in Gaza. That is tremendously exciting stuff and endorses some of what Peter has been saying.’
I smiled gratefully at him. A tear ran down my cheek. Nobody seemed to notice.
‘But we must acknowledge that there is a perception amongst some of our voters that we are not succeeding quickly enough. Those images of the helicopter crash in Dhahran last week…The arson attacks in the Bull Ring in Birmingham. The recent explosion in Iran, which everyone seems to know was us-’
‘The leaks didn’t come from my department,’ said Davidson.
‘Nevertheless. There have been a lot of negative stories out there. Then those American Baptist missionaries in Basra, trying to convert the locals by offering them a hundred dollars a head. That didn’t play well back here, and if they hadn’t been kidnapped and executed I don’t know how much public relations damage they could have done. We do need a different angle. Not instead of what we are doing, but as well as what we are doing. We need to change the growing perception amongst our own public that we are treating the Muslim world with contempt and indifference.’
The boss looked thoughtful. There was silence while we all waited for him to speak. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Peter. What about that salmon project thing? In the Yemen?’
I nodded. I still didn’t trust myself to speak. Then I swallowed and said, ‘We stepped back a bit from that one, if you remember.’
‘Well,’ said the boss, ‘you need to reassess that decision. I’m not sure you made the right call there, Peter. I was keen on that project and I’d like to see it succeed.’
It was no use reminding him that only a few weeks previously, in this very room, he had ticked me off in front of more or less the same audience for having dinner with the sheikh and getting too close to the project. The boss was right then, and he was right now. That is why he was the boss.
‘Yes, boss,’ I told him. ‘I’ll get right on it. I’ll get us back in there.’
28
From:
Date:
12 December
To:
Subject:
Absence
My dearest Mary,
How are you? I am sorry I have been out of touch but I have been in a remote part of the Yemen for several weeks and access to the Internet has not been possible for much of that time.
Since I returned I have been very busy catching up. Also something rather dreadful happened to a colleague, which has been distracting, to say the very least. So I know you will understand why you haven’t heard from me for a while.
I trust you are well and in good spirits and that the job is going well.
Do get in touch and let me know how you are.
Love,
Fred
From:
Date:
12 December
To:
Subject:
Re: Absence
Well! I thought you had forgotten about me.
Don’t tell me that even in the Yemen you can’t wander into an Internet café and send a quick email. I just don’t believe you can go anywhere these days and be that cut off.
Since you ask, I am fine. I have lost a little weight as I tend to forget to eat, living on my own as I do. Do you find that?
Or perhaps you are with Ms Chetwode-Talbot and your friend the sheikh all the time. I imagine you must be leading a grand sort of life in such eminent company and eating restaurant food twice a day?
My job is going very well, thank you for remembering to ask about it. My contribution to the Geneva office is being recognised, and the hard work I have put in over the last few months is paying off. It is gratifying to see both the result and the recognition one has received for one’s efforts. I shall be coming to London in the fairly near future for a review meeting at the European head office there, and possible promotion is in the air. I trust my visit will give us an opportunity to meet and spend some time together. I feel it is important that we have some fairly serious discussions about our life together and our future.
I will let you know my plans as soon as I have some firm dates for this visit.
Mary
PS: You don’t say anything at all about how the salmon project is getting on. Have you finally realised just how irrational the whole idea is? I always wondered how you could let yourself be taken in by the idea in the first place. I would have supposed your scientific training would have made it impossible for you to allow yourself to become involved in something like that. One is constantly surprised by the elasticity of people’s standards, but I am surprised you have been so quick to compromise. As for when people ask me what you do, which they sometimes do as I am still relatively new here, I don’t know what to tell them. I did once admit to someone (thankfully not in this office) that you were being paid to introduce salmon into the Yemen and she screamed with laughter for about five minutes and wouldn’t believe I wasn’t joking.