Marcos murmured: ‘There’s always another way.’
We then surrounded the green as he sank the ball, two under par. Now there was a man in charge of himself.
Twenty
After a further visit to Western Samoa and a rainy fortnight I was at last able to collect the approved new designs and obtain the banknote order. This cleared Brads out of the Pacific. I telexed the excellent news.
That moment of radiance was hit on the head as soon as I pressed the send button. There was a message from Julian quoting from a press cutting. It announced that the New Zealand Prime Minister Muldoon had signed up for Bradbury to build a banknote factory there, in Whan-gerey, North Island, with the government’s commercial bank, the Bank of New Zealand, as a shareholder. That bank had Gerry Norman on its board. They had not advised him but kept it secret, that board meeting he had not attended. The New Zealand treachery was compounded by the behaviour of the Reserve Bank. I had thought that the attentiveness and friendship shared with them, the Deputy Governor in particular, had meant something. He could have whispered a warning during one of our whisky-fuelled evenings. We had provided their banknotes with-out a break since the 1930s. This action of theirs was unforgivable. I could hardly bear the idea of ever seeing any of them again. I was glad when Julian came out to join me.
On my way to Wellington I dropped into Fiji which I knew would come under heavy pressure from Brads. Both they and we were prepar-ing new designs. I paid a visit to the CDC man there, a former colleague. He read the newspaper report and sympathised, but said that sure as eggs is eggs the news confirmed a government commitment at the highest level. Nothing could be done to stop that.
Julian looked terrible on arrival after flying straight out, half way round the world, eastwards, against the sun. We took a day off and lolled beside a geyser, and sometimes in it. This was restful. We decided that we should first ask the advice of our friends at the National Bank of New Zealand, whose traveller’s cheques we printed. They intro-duced us to John Marshall, one of their directors who had been Prime Minister, referred to as ‘Gentleman Jack’. Julian briefed him. He was outraged at his compatriots’ behaviour, both the BNZ and the Reserve Bank. Utterly reprehensible, he said. We retained his services as an adviser. When he went to London he met our directors and they trusted him straightaway.
Of course I felt I had failed. I received a long hand-written letter from Gerry Norman saying that in no way should I blame myself. I wondered whether it had been wrong of me not to have reported my hunch that the people I was dealing with were so bland and provincial that they could be treacherous. Had I done so my masters might have thought I was not the man to represent them in New Zealand. I had not wanted to risk that. Brads still needed a couple of years to build their factory and meanwhile the Reserve Bank remained our customer. We had to go on being nice to them, and blame Prime Minister Muldoon for swearing them to silence. Genuine hypocrisy.
We checked everything out with the Prime Ministry and the Trea-sury, and they confirmed that the secrecy had been ordered by Muldoon. Even then the bruised egos of De La Rue would not allow them to admit that Brads had beaten us. I had continually to go to London to be briefed for further meetings in New Zealand. This was ridiculous. Even Peter Orchard flew out on his own to scour the ground. Perhaps he intended to impress his fellow directors with his determination. The only new point in his report was that on the outward flight there had been fog in Dubai. For me the whole thing became a blur. I had to fly round the world three times in six weeks.
I always went with the sun, to the west, and took my time. When spending the night in New York I saw a play, then headed next day to Los Angeles. I had heard that Merle Oberon was unwell. I bought a beautiful pink cyclamen and left it with a note outside their front gate in Malibu. I then went to Topanga Canyon for what Americans call horseback riding. This set me up for the dinner and night flight across the almost never-ending Pacific to Auckland. There I rented a car and drove north to see the Brads factory in Whangerey and photograph it. On the way were the loveliest suburban gardens with herbaceous borders and trees. New Zealand at its best.
At Wellington the Reserve Bank was friendly. They showed me the Brads designs. Their portrait of the Queen made her look more intel-ligent than ours did. I consulted with Jack Marshall and he suggested I go to the Bank of New Zealand and give them hell. Basingstoke agreed.
I made an appointment with their chief executive. De La Rue were paying me to be beastly. Quite a change. Next to his bank’s building, visible through his office window, was his new headquarters skyscraper under construction. Work on it had ceased because of bloody-minded builders’ unions. I kicked off by inquiring sympathetically about that, which was sure to be an embarrassment for him. He spoke in a frank and friendly manner. Then I showed him a photograph of the massive SPW we were building in Manila, hardly to be compared with the three-bay factory being screwed together by Brads. I said we at De La Rue could not understand the factory’s being located in New Zealand. With a population there of only three million Brads could perhaps justify a mini-factory for local needs, maybe for a Pacific island or two, but the distances to their main export customers would create serious problems.
He seemed sufficiently disarmed for me to show him the full horror of the balance sheets of Bradbury and their owner’s, the American Banknote Company. To my surprise he, as a banker and fellow share-holder, had no idea how unattractive the numbers were. Brads was nearly bankrupt. He started shouting at me. Just what I wanted. He rose to his feet, put his face a couple of feet from mine, as if to hit me as I sat. Even better. He yelled that he had never been treated like this before. Was it normal De La Rue behaviour? So I started in on how he and his board had concealed their decisions from their own fellow director, our chairman, Sir Arthur Norman, and slowly described the reactions expressed by our friends, especially in the City of London, how they were mostly sarcastic, some even funny, belittling the bank he led and New Zealand itself. He sat down, elbows flumped on his knees. I replaced my documents in my briefcase, got to my feet, and left.
All this I described to Gentleman Jack who said I had done a worthy job of representation. My own point of view was that it was an unpleasant waste of time doing nobody any good. Two further rounds of briefing in London and Basingstoke, and twice more round the world. Never have I had such jet lag, despite breaking the journey for the sake of my health. Wellington time at two in the morning was far different from the time my body was trying to catch up with. In the middle of every night I became well versed in the tales of Dracula, Frankenstein and all the TV horror movies. When you are that jet-lagged, fatuous fancies become plausible. As for the Werewolf, the only possible death for that pitiable monster was to be shot with a silver bullet, fired by a beautiful virgin who loves him enough to ‘understand’ – that came to make tremendous sense.
My next time round I went to Malibu to see how Merle was and Rob Wolders was there to welcome me. Merle was upstairs in bed, back from open-heart surgery. He said the cyclamen I had previously left for her had wilted and seemed to symbolise her health. He had nurtured it and revived it and Merle started to recover. His love for her was palpa-ble. It made me feel how empty my own life was.
Some months later I persuaded De La Rue to let me check out Tahiti. It was a ‘Département’, constitutionally a part of France. As I had prised Madagascar and Mauritania away from the Bank of France, Julian said I could spend four days in Tahiti to find out what I could. I went there from Western Samoa. On arrival in Papeete all passengers had to surrender their luggage to be fumigated. This was for protection against rhinoceros beetles which chewed up the palm trees in Samoa. Our suitcases were heaped into a vacuum chamber and the process lasted an hour.
Sitting on the floor in a corner of the grubby lounge were a dozen ill-dressed men with intelligent faces, all smoking: Tahitians, Eurasians and a few French. They had not been on the plane. This was an airport. They were having a meeting. I went ove
r and introduced myself as a printer of banknotes and wondered if they were perhaps politicians? They were immediately interested. After a few minutes they stopped looking side to side at each other and then turned to me as I explained De La Rue to them. I gave them my business card. I asked whether they were disaffected with the colonial status accorded to their country by faraway Metropolitan France. They very much resented it and were working secretly to change it. They each gave me their names, addresses and telephone numbers and agreed the importance of keeping in touch. In that single hour the information I gained was excellent. I suggested, a trifle naughtily, that in gatherings such as theirs there was often a Swede, as there had been in Guinea Bissau where I had once traced the bush-occupying Revolutionary Council. They thought this a huge joke. They had had a Swedish colleague, quite mad, so they had dropped him. In my report to De La Rue I said they were not to be taken seri-ously. France would never let Tahiti go.
I collected my baggage, rented a car, checked into a hotel and drove off to see the Gauguin museum. It was worthless. No paintings, only postcards of them lined up, with France on first line showing that it had the most originals, then the Soviet Union, the US and so forth. Next day I took the plane to Bora Bora, a hundred and fifty miles away. On board were Rob Wolders and Merle, now fully recovered. They were staying at the Hotel Bora Bora, with Polynesian-style bungalows at the end of walkways over the sea.
I had the time of my life with young Americans at the Club Mediter-ranée. We went out in a large glass-bottomed boat. The canvas curtains were drawn and the only light came from the sea beneath us. We saw a giant manta ray. Beyond the reef there were big waves. The men threaded chunks of horseflesh along a chain which they lowered in an extended loop over the bows. We saw the blood oozing from the meat and in no time this was attacked by sharks, magnified to twice their size by the seawater. We could feel their strength as they pulled and sheered off with lumps in their mouths, tugs of war between them, a violent feeding frenzy only a few feet beneath our flip-flops. That afternoon we sailed in a ketch out to the reef and back. I dined with Merle and Rob, and returned to the Club Med for all that was best.
Early July I was in England again for further discussions in London with Gerry Norman and Peter Orchard. I had several glimpses of Isis and Clavelle in Whitchurch, with Riddelle. I put 31 Queensdale Road on the market, sold it for five times what I had paid for it and gave Riddelle a lump sum divorce settlement, while I continued paying school fees and maintenance of the children.
One evening Mario D’Urso invited me for a drinks party at his ground floor flat in Eaton Square, followed by dinner at Annabel’s, for me to dance attendance on Princess Margaret and Imelda. I arrived on the dot of seven and HRH at five past. There were a couple of dozen others; the sort of people I categorise as the beautiful beastlies: rich men, often questionably so, and their trophy wifelets. Princess Margaret glanced at them despairingly and came over to join me. She remembered we had danced almost all night during a coming out ball. She asked how long ago that was. Rather than state the number of years – twenty-three – I said the party had been beside Regent’s Park and the dance floor was on a scaffolding over the garden. The floor had moved gently up and down in time as we moved to the music. We had enjoyed that.
Unfortunately her mood remained bad. She was on a diet, sipping ginger ale, and had lost so much weight that her bodice was too big for her bosom. She made conversation difficult. I thought Imelda would never arrive. I asked Princess Margaret if she had heard the phrase ‘Filipino Time’. She had.
Imelda arrived at half past eight. One had to admire Mario’s style. Both his guests of honour had to be called ‘Ma’am’. This was a further irritation for Princess Margaret because it put Imelda on the same level as herself. We left for Annabel’s, Imelda in a Rolls and Princess Margaret in a big Ford, both with chauffeurs. At a long table near the dance floor Mario placed me on Imelda’s right. He sat opposite her and Princess Margaret on his left opposite me. The beautiful beastlies extended to each end of the table. I sensed that Princess Margaret would not relish sitting nearly opposite the other Ma’am. She was pleased when I asked her to dance but her pleasure had gone by the time we reached the dance floor.
She settled into sourness. I raised an eyebrow in the direction of our table but she definitely did not want to return there. She gave me a little thump. Not a pleasant little thump. Eventually we did sit down with the others and dined. Imelda’s graciousness was ignored and so was Mario’s. Mine had been written off completely.
At the end of a testing dinner, when it was tempting to look at our watches, an Argentinian banker leant towards Princess Margaret and asked if she knew that her birthday was on the same day as mine – 21 August. She gave me a hostile look and asked: ‘How long have you known that?’
I was the soul of discretion and did not count the years. I said: ‘Almost as long as I can remember, ma’am.’
There were approving smiles all round.
Her face hardened and she demanded, sarcastically: ‘And have we anything in common?’
That was beyond even what I could tolerate. I am a man, not infi-nitely mol nor mou. ‘Yes,’ I said, metaphorically wiping the blade of a knife on my sleeve. ‘Yes, ma’am, as a matter of fact we have.’
‘And what’, disdainfully, ‘could that possibly be?’
I leant forward archly and carefully delivered the line; ‘We’re both, ma’am, just divorced.’
Hardly gallant. There were a few titters which she deserved.
Imelda asked what I was doing next day. I told her I was going to New Zealand. She said she was flying to New York and would I like to join her on the way.
I went to the Philippine Ambassador’s Residence in Kensington Palace Gardens at nine. The two of us were driven to Heathrow, a special area where the Philippine equivalent of Air Force One was parked. A PAL Boeing 707. She was met by an English protocol chief, resplendent with moustache and three-piece suit. He had actually had an illustrious career, becoming head of London Underground and was David Mitchell-Innes’s father-in-law. The chairman of the airline, Jun Luz, and one or two other men were there, the rest being ‘Blue Ladies’, her favoured friends, all looking their self-conscious best. They sat in the middle and rear seats. The front had a walled off bedroom down one side and a couple of seats facing each other on the other.
Five minutes after take-off Jun Luz came in deferentially and said there was a problem. One of the doors for the landing gear had failed to click shut. So many flights into Heathrow were stacked up, waiting to land, the best solution was to proceed to Holland and land at Schiphol, Amsterdam. Imelda agreed. That airport was famous for its enormous duty free centre. As soon as the airport stairs were in place and the aircraft door opened out, she and the Blue Ladies stormed down the steps and clacked their high heels into the airport bus. They spent more than an hour buying Jaeger, Rolexes, Leicas and jewellery. As our departure was announced I bought a large bunch of red roses. At the bottom of the aircraft steps I presented them to Imelda. She buried her high cheekbones into them and took a deep appreciative breath. Then she handed them back, making me feel an idiot.
She went into her room and slept for a couple of hours. She came out refreshed and wanted to discuss the problems boys can have if their fathers are world famous and lack ‘quality’ time with their children. Their son was doing well, had always had sensible friendships, and he seemed free of the horrors of teen age. So we had a long and confiden-tial chat.
She looked at the watch on my wrist and asked how I got it. I said my mother had given it to me as an engagement present: an Omega Constellation, with a white face. When my wife left me I had changed it to a black face. Now that my divorce had gone through I had had it changed to gold. I intended to fend off the offer of a Rolex, just bought at Schiphol. She got the message, went into her room and came out with a tiny box. Inside was a pair of cufflinks; chrome and some diamante bits. A bit nouveau riche but appropriate. In the lid
was her card: ‘Imelda Romualdez Marcos. First Lady of the Philippines’.
She understood the use of power. For example she had had an intriguing altercation with President Gaddafi of Libya. He had been supporting the breakaway movement by the Muslims in the southern island of Mindanao. Diplomatic exchanges led to her being invited to make an official visit to Tripoli. The only people at the airport to meet her Presidential plane were her exceedingly nervous embassy staff. She told her Ambassador that if Gaddafi did not come by the time her plane had refuelled she would return to Manila, creating a diplomatic inci-dent for the world to enjoy. This rattled Gaddafi into meeting her there and then. For two days he showed her his projects for economic devel-opment and irrigation in particular. She was impressed. She asked what he wanted her government to do for Mindanao. He said the people should be given a referendum on whether they wanted independence from Manila, with their own foreign policy, defence and other trap-pings. She made the condition that he would stop supplying weapons if there was a majority ‘no’ vote. He was pleased to agree. However, the people of Mindanao were too disjointed and scared to break away from Manila. They voted overwhelmingly against the referendum as she and her husband knew they would. Her initiative put an end to the Libyan arms supply for a number of years. She knew her people.
Fiji advised that at their next board meeting they would chose between us and Brads for their new banknote designs. On my way there I paid my usual visit to Wellington. Gentleman Jack advised me that Brads had been nobbling the Fijian Minister of Finance, who was ex-officio chairman of the Central Bank. He was a large white man in colonial shorts, the owner of the country’s largest chain of department stores. Before seeing him I had to find out what the bank’s preference was. Much to my relief they preferred our designs and prices, but said the minister could overrule them. Armed with this highly confidential knowledge, gathered from the bank’s lower echelons, I went to see the minister, my fifth or sixth such visit, so the atmosphere was informal.
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