As you know, I find jokes and facetiousness childish and don’t tend to indulge myself in that way, so if colleagues ask what you do, or if I have to supply the information to human resources, I just say you are a fisheries scientist and leave it at that. But then, how do I explain why you are working for an estate agent?
From:
Date:
13 December
To:
Subject:
Salmon project
Mary,
Thank you for asking about my work in the Yemen, even if I found some of your remarks somewhat negative. You almost appeared to be questioning my scientific integrity, although I am sure you did not intend to.
Anyway, since you ask, allow me to reassure you that the Yemen salmon project is going to work. We may not live to see Yemeni anglers catching salmon on the fly as they run up the Wadi Aleyn, although even that is far from impossible, but we will see salmon run up the Wadi Aleyn. Of that I am confident. And I think there is every chance that the fish will run all the way up the wadi, and some of them will manage to spawn in the headwaters before the waters recede. What will happen after that we cannot say.
Will any salmon fry actually be produced in the gravel beds at the head of the wadi, and will any of them survive long enough to head downstream before the waters evaporate? Probably not. Will we succeed in catching some of the hen fish in order to strip their eggs and rear salmon fry in the more controllable conditions in the little experimental hatchery we have built alongside Holding Basin N°1? Yes, I think we may succeed in that. Will we be able to catch enough live salmon running back down the wadi to restock Holding Basin N°2 (which is now going to be doped with salt to mimic the salinity of seawater)? Time alone will tell.
If we can trick the salmon into wanting to run upstream to follow the smell of freshwater, if we can trick the salmon returning downstream to smell the saltwater in Holding Basin N°2 and swim into the salmon trap-then we will have achieved a scientific miracle. And I use the word miracle because that is what the sheikh believes it will be: a scientific achievement which has come about through divine inspiration and intervention. I am not sure, when it finally happens, that I will want to disagree with him.
I look forward to telling you more about it all when we meet, and I am delighted that you may be finding some time in your busy schedule to come and see your husband. Please give me as much advance notice as possible as I have a heavy travel schedule myself at present between London, Scotland and the Yemen.
Fred
PS: Your remarks about my supposedly extravagant lifestyle provoke me to comment that the sheikh lives simply, but well. He and I and Harriet Chetwode-Talbot dined together every night at his house, and we dined well but on the kind of healthy Arabic food that does not tend to fatten one up. In the daytime Harriet and I made do with copious amounts of water and fruit, to keep us going through our busy schedule.
From:
Date:
14 December
To:
Subject:
(no subject)
Fred,
Are you having an affair with Harriet Chetwode-Talbot? I would be interested to know where I stand.
Mary
From:
Date:
14 December
To:
Subject:
Harriet
Mary,
If you knew the full situation, then you would not ask such an insensitive question. Harriet Chetwode-Talbot is, or was, engaged to a soldier called Robert Matthews. You may or may not have seen stories about him in the press. To cut a long story short, Harriet came back from the mountains of Heraz (where she, like me, had no access to the Internet for most of the time, or any other form of communication with the UK) to find some dreadful news waiting for her. When she arrived in Sana’a, the capital of the Yemen, she found a stack of messages which had not been forwarded to al-Shisr, the village we have been staying in for the last few weeks. The dreadful news that she received was that her fiancé was Missing in Action, and is presumed dead. Of course she flew straight back to the UK to see Robert’s parents, and from there went to her own family home, and there she remains at present. I gather the poor girl is prostrate with grief and hardly able to speak, let alone do anything else. Does that answer your question?
From:
Date:
14 December
To:
Subject:
Re: Harriet
No.
From:
Date:
14 December
To:
Subject:
Condolences
Harriet,
I just want to say again how dreadfully, dreadfully sorry I was for you when you heard the news about Robert. I know you had been worried sick, and then you told me just before you left me at al-Shisr and drove back to Sana’a that somehow you felt Robert was out of danger.
What a bitter blow for you then to receive the news that you did. It is almost worse that he is missing and you do not know for certain what has happened to him. But, as you said, it is almost certain that the worst has happened and I expect the MoD or his regiment will confirm that all too soon. When that happens, you must be brave. And you must not hesitate to turn to your friends for whatever comfort and succour they can give.
I hope you are picking up your emails at home, and I hope the week’s rest and being with your parents are giving you some comfort and new strength. All I wanted you to know is that if there is anything I can do to help, now or in the future, you have only to ask. Harriet, I think a great deal of you. You are not only a valued colleague but now a dear friend. More than a friend, someone very special to me. I think of you always.
My fondest wishes,
Fred
From:
Date:
16 December
To:
Subject:
Re: Condolences
Fred,
Thank you for your sweet email. It helps so much to hear from my friends, but nothing can bring back Robert. I always thought that having your heart broken was something that only people in novels experienced, that it was a form of words. But that is exactly what this feels like-a pain, in my heart, with me day and night.
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I cry all the time. I know I am being pathetic but I can’t help myself. I know thousands of others are going through, or have gone through, what I am now experiencing. It doesn’t make much difference to my own loss.
You remembered me saying how I felt Robert was out of danger, how I felt that sensation of relief, or release, that day after we had walked up the Wadi Aleyn together for the first time. Robert was out of danger that day, forever out of danger, forever safe. He died that day.