by Paul Torday
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
Evidence of a marital crisis between Dr and Mrs Jones
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
12 December
To:
[email protected]
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
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
12 December
To:
[email protected]
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.
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?
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
13 December
To:
[email protected]
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 Harr
iet and I made do with copious amounts of water and fruit, to keep us going through our busy schedule.
Email
From:
Mary, [email protected]
Date:
14 December
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
(no subject)
Fred,
Are you having an affair with Harriet Chetwode-Talbot? I would be interested to know where I stand.
Mary
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
14 December
To:
[email protected]
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?
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
14 December
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Harriet
No.
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
14 December
To:
[email protected]
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
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
16 December
To:
[email protected]
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.
The MoD got in touch yesterday. They confirmed the time of his death, and just said it occurred during ‘anti-insurgent operations in eastern Iraq, in the line of duty, killed by enemy fire together with the rest of his unit’. But that was it: that is all I will ever know about the circumstances of Robert’s death.
Twenty-odd words represent the full extent of the MoD’s comment on Robert’s life, his ten years’ service with the marines and his death.
I’m going to pull myself together and come back to work next week. That’s the best chance I have of getting through this.
Although at the moment I’m not sure this is something I ever will get through. But I know you and all my friends will help me try.
Love,
Harriet
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
14 December
To:
Familysupportgroup.gov.uk
Subject:
Captain Robert Matthews
Please could someone tell me how I can get more information from the MoD? I was engaged to Captain Robert Matthews who was reported as Missing in Action in Operation Telic 2, and this was posted on the website on 21 November. The MoD has refused to give me any further information. I would like to know more about the circumstances of his death—where he died and the mission he was engaged on. I do not believe I am being told the full truth about any of this, and I think I and Robert’s family have a right to know.
Harriet Chetwode-Talbot
Email
From:
Familysupportgroup.gov.uk
Date:
21 December
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Captain Robert Matthews
Dear Ms Chetwode-Talbot,
We are unable to help you with any of your queries, as we are dependent on the MoD to supply us with any information of the kind you are seeking. As Captain Matthews was on operational duties in an area with maximum threat level rating, the MoD has reserved the right to make a judgement about what information can, or cannot, be released on the basis of security considerations. We cannot assist you further. However, we recognise the stress this must cause, and suggest that you contact a new unit which has recently been set up by the MoD to supplement our own services, which is located in Grimsby. The contact details are: Bereavement Management Centre on 08004008000 or at [email protected].
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
21 December
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Captain Robert Matthews
My name is Harriet Chetwode-Talbot and I was engaged to a serving officer, Captain Robert Matthews, who was recently (21 November) posted as Missing in Action on the Operation Telic 2 website. Please can you help me. I desperately need to know:
how he died
where he died
why he died
Please can someone contact me as soon as possible?
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
3 January
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Captain Robert Matthews
Owing to the volume of enquiries and current MoD budgetary constraints, this operation has recently been offshored to Hyderabad, India. Please call us on 08004008000 and you will be answered by one of o
ur highly trained staff. All of our staff have taken the UK NVQ in bereavement counselling or a local equivalent of the same qualification. As this operation has only recently been transferred, you may experience some linguistic difficulties with some of our newer staff. Please be patient, they are seeking to do their best to help you.
All calls will be monitored for training and quality purposes. The counselling service is entirely free, but calls cost 50p per minute.
29
Interview with Dr Alfred Jones: dinner at the Ritz
Interrogator:
When did you last meet the sheikh in the UK?
Dr Alfred Jones:
I met him in a hotel in London, in early July. We had dinner together, and Harriet joined us.
Interrogator:
What was the purpose of the dinner? Was Mr Peter Maxwell present?
Alfred Jones:
No, Peter Maxwell was not present then, although I met him that same day. It was a few days before I went out again to the Yemen for the final project launch. The sheikh had asked Harriet to dine with him at the Ritz. I had never been to the Ritz before. It was a beautiful, elegant room, with large round tables well apart from each other. I arrived first, of course; I am always too early for trains, planes and dinners. I spent ten minutes gazing at the expensively suited, smartly dressed inhabitants of the other tables. Have you ever dined at the Ritz?