by Paul Torday
I had been preparing for this question and I knew the answer. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I can make the sure the prime minister has a fish on the end of his line by the time he has to leave.’
Peter Maxwell looked relieved, and impressed. I think he was expecting to have to fight a battle with me over this.
‘How will you do it?’ he asked curiously. ‘I’m told it’s not that easy to catch these things.’
‘You don’t want to know,’ I told him.
The rest of the conversation was all about the prime minister’s schedule, his private meetings in Sana’a and the press arrangements, and I didn’t repeat any of it to Harriet and the sheikh because they had helped arrange all that part of it anyway.
Interrogator:
This has nothing to do with anything except my personal curiosity, but how would you get a fish on the end of someone’s line?
Alfred Jones:
That’s exactly what Harriet asked me at dinner that night: ‘How on earth can you guarantee that the prime minister catches a fish?’
I smiled. The sheikh leaned forward, his face full of interest.
‘When I was a boy my father played a trick on me once. He put a fly several sizes too large on the end of my line. He knew that the fly would sink too fast into the water and that I was bound to snag the fly on a stone. And he knew that, because I was so inexperienced, I would think the stone I had caught was a fish. It takes a while before you know the difference.’
‘It is true,’ said the sheikh. ‘I made the same mistake myself once or twice, when I started fishing.’
‘So then he went out with the net and pretended he was having difficulty landing the fish. But actually what he did was stand with his back to me, get a salmon he’d caught earlier out of the poaching pocket in his jacket, take it out of the newspaper he had wrapped it in, pull my fly from under the stone where it was caught, hook it into the salmon’s mouth, and jerk the line and splash about to give the impression there was a bit of a fight and there was the fish in the net.’
The sheikh and Harriet laughed.
‘But did he tell you?’ asked Harriet.
‘Oh yes, he told me. I’d caught a couple of fish by then and the point of the joke was to teach me the difference between the pull of a fish on the line, and the pull of the weight of water on the line, when the fly is simply stuck on a rock or in a bit of weed.’
‘Your prime minister must never know,’ said the sheikh seriously. ‘I do not want to give offence or distress to a guest, no matter what happens.’
‘He won’t know,’ I promised him.
Dinner was over, and the sheikh said he would sit in the foyer to wait for his car. Harriet and I agreed we would like a walk before finding taxis to take us to our homes. It was a beautiful evening, and the sky was still light. We walked slowly along Piccadilly together.
‘What a good evening,’ said Harriet. ‘I do love the sheikh. I will miss him.’
‘Won’t you see him next time he comes to Glen Tulloch?’
‘He won’t be coming back for a long while. He wants to stay and attend to the future success of the salmon project, and he knows the launch is just the beginning and there will be many, many problems and crises to deal with after that. And you, I hope, will go there and help whenever he needs it.’
‘Of course I will,’ I agreed, ‘but won’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet. ‘Maybe it’s time for me to move on. I’ve put a lot of myself into the project, and really there isn’t that much more for me to do. And Robert’s death, as you know better than most people, has been a very heavy blow. I just need to take stock. I need a break.’
‘Of course you need a break, Harriet,’ I told her. ‘No one deserves it more than you.’ We had stopped by the railings that ran alongside Green Park, absorbed in our conversation. The evening traffic was still busy. The park gates were still open, so we stepped inside for a moment to get away from the noise of traffic.
‘But you’ll come to the Yemen for the great day?’ I asked.
‘No, Fred, I won’t,’ said Harriet. ‘I will be there for you in spirit, but not in the flesh. The truth is I couldn’t bear it if something went wrong. I couldn’t bear another disaster. I’d rather be here, and then if I don’t want to see what’s happening I can just switch off the television until it is over.’
‘But there won’t be a disaster,’ I said.
‘I know there won’t,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve done everything you can to make this work, and I know that if anyone can pull this off, it’s you. But…my head tells me all of that, and my heart tells me something else.’
I stared at her. She stood close to me, her face white in the faint street light, still beautiful to me despite the lines of strain.
‘But, Harriet…’
‘I’m going away,’ she said, ‘the day after the project is launched in the Yemen. I’ve got leave of absence from Fitzharris for six months, and they’ll keep my job open in case I want it back. At the moment, I don’t think I will.’
‘But, Harriet…’ I said again, hopelessly.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks. It was too much. I took her in my arms and kissed her. At first she let me hold her and responded briefly to my kiss, but then she went limp. I let her go and she stepped away.
‘Don’t, Fred,’ she said.
‘But when will I see you again?’ I asked. ‘You know how I feel about you. I can’t help it, and I’m so sorry to have done what I just did, so soon after Robert, but I can wait. I’ll always wait for you, if you just say that one day there could be some hope for me.’
‘There isn’t any hope,’ she said in a dull voice, ‘not for you, not for me.’
‘But, Harriet,’ I said again, ‘you know what happened at al-Shisr. Didn’t that mean anything to you? It meant everything to me. It changed my life.’
‘I can’t see you again, Fred,’ Harriet told me, her voice still not quite steady, ‘and whatever happened, or didn’t happen, at al-Shisr was just a dream you had. I only remember a dream. And now we’re in waking life and the reality is you are married to Mary. You are fifteen or twenty years older than me, and we come from completely different worlds. I am still grieving for Robert, and I have to rebuild my life without him. And I have to do it without you or anyone else. It just isn’t possible there could ever be more between us. We’ve been friends-you’ve been the best friend I could have ever wanted-but I can’t give you any hope that there would ever be anything more.’
I turned away from her for a moment. The lamps in the park had just come on and must have dazzled my eyes, for they were watering. With my back to her I said, ‘I understand, Harriet. You’re right.’
She came up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I know I’m right. I hate myself for it, but it’s the truth. Come on, Fred, help me find a taxi.’
The interview resumed the following morning.
Interrogator:
Describe the events that took place in the Wadi Aleyn.
Alfred Jones:
The thing to realise about the Wadi Aleyn in August was that it was hot. It was hot beyond the imagination of anyone who has never been in the desert. The sun in the Wadi Aleyn was hotter than a dozen English suns. It burned down out of a milky sky, and the rocks were hot to the touch. The thought of a salmon surviving unprotected in that heat, in that incandescent light, was beyond belief. And yet they had to.
I had been a dozen times around the holding basins, which were slowly filling with water from the aquifer. The oxygen bubblers were working rhythmically at the sides. Water temperatures were being held stable at around 21 degrees Celsius and we thought we could drop that three degrees when the rains came. I had checked everything, and rechecked, and I knew I was driving the project teams, and myself, mad with my constant questioning. In the end I took myself off up the wadi. I wore a hat and covered myself with sun cream, but still I felt as if I was in a furnace.
This was the time bef
ore the rains came. Out in the desert sandstorms would build themselves on giant thermals. In the towns and villages people and animals moved about as little as possible in the heat of the day, found shade wherever they could and waited for the sun to go lower in the sky.
In the wadi the heat and airlessness were almost too much for me. There was a sense of something building, like a distant storm. When the rains came, we would make a call to the UK. Within twenty-four hours of that call, the fish at McSalmon Aqua Farms would be taken from their cages and placed in the flying aquariums, which is what everyone called the stainless-steel pods in which they would be flown out to the Middle East. In another twenty-four hours they would be ready for delivery into the holding basins. And then we would wait. We would wait for the waters of the Wadi Aleyn to flow, and as the flow grew from a trickle to a stream, from a stream to a river, we would open the sluice gates. And then we would see.
I found I was breathing hard and feeling a little dizzy. The heat was getting to me. There was no one within a mile of me, at least no one I could see. I found a flat stone in the shade of overhanging cliffs that was not too hot, and sat on it, trying to recover myself. I took a Thermos of cold water from my backpack and took a pull on it. After a moment I felt a little better.
The silence around me was absolute. Even the buzzards were quiet. Rock walls stretched above me. There was not a single sign of vegetation. What did the goats live on now, the goats belonging to the girl further up the wadi who had once brought us water?
I tried not to think about Harriet, but she kept intruding into my thoughts, as real as if she was standing in front of me. I could almost see her, like a ghost, now gaining substance, now fading again, her voice, thin and insubstantial, saying, ‘There isn’t any hope, not for me, not for you.’
I thought about the sheikh saying, although I could not remember his exact words, ‘Without faith, there is no hope. Without faith, there is no love.’
Then in a moment, in that vast space of rocks and sky and scorching sun, I understood that he had not meant religious faith, not exactly. He was not urging me to become a Muslim or to believe in one interpretation of God rather than another. He knew me for what I was, an old, cold, cautious scientist. That was what I was then. And he was simply pointing out to me the first step to take. The word he had used was faith, but what he meant was belief. The first step was simple: it was to believe in belief itself. I had just taken that step. At long last I understood.
I had belief. I did not know, or for the moment care, what exactly it was I had to believe in. I only knew that belief in something was the first step away from believing in nothing, the first step away from a world which only recognised what it could count, measure, sell or buy. The people here still had that innocent power of belief: not the angry denial of other people’s belief of religious fanatics, but a quiet affirmation. That was what I sensed here, in this land and in this place, which made it so different from home. It was not the clothes, not the language, not the customs, not the sense of being in another century. It was none of these. It was the pervading presence of belief.
I believed in belief. I didn’t exactly feel as if I was on the road to Damascus, and I was aware I could not think straight because of the power of the sun, but now I knew what the Yemen salmon project was all about. It had already worked its transformation on me. It would do the same for others.
30
Dr Jones fails to find a date in his diary to meet Mrs Jones
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
15 July
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Visit
Fred
I am coming back to London for a review meeting in the first week in August. I know this is slightly later than I originally suggested, but I had to get a date in the diary of our CEO western hemisphere, and that is never easy. I trust you will be able to accommodate this change in your own plans as I think it is most important we meet. I am concerned that you have allowed my extended absence in Geneva (which I think we agreed at the time was an essential career step for me, and one I think that, in the light of the insecurity of your present position, I was wise to take) to lead you into a state of complacency about our marriage. While I am working every hour in the day every weekday and most weekends in order to provide for our future financial security, you appear to be leading a life progressively more and more disconnected from reality. Of course you tell me very little, but from what I can gather, you have spent the spring fishing in Scotland with your sheikh and his lady friend or sunning yourself in the Yemen with the same lady, while our flat is neglected, and I am neglected too. It is very difficult for me to say it, but I am neglected.
So please be sure to be available when I arrive in London. We need to talk.
Mary
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
16 July
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Visit
Mary,
While you are at the mercy of the Inter Finance CEO western hemisphere and his timetable, my own schedule is now decided by the office of the prime minister. They have decreed I must be in the Yemen on the dates you say you will be in London, and I am afraid there is nothing I can do about that. I have to be there.
I am terribly sorry. I agree we need to meet. I will be back in mid-August, if all goes well, and I suggest either I fly to Geneva or you fly to London one weekend.
Love,
Fred
Email
From:
Mary.jones(Sjinterfinance. org
Date:
16 July
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Re: Re: Visit
Fred,
I cannot for a moment imagine that the prime minister couldn’t do without you for a day or two in the Yemen. He has a whole government at his beck and call, surely he could do without one fisheries scientist for a couple of days? I can only assume you are deliberately avoiding me.
You can fly to Geneva if you like. I cannot guarantee my availability that far ahead. I have a lot of travel commitments coming up.
Mary
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
18 July
To:
[email protected]
Subject:
Yemen trip
Mary,
OK.
I know you don’t believe that the PM wants me in the Yemen but I think this trip and these dates have been in his diary for some weeks now, which was why I was careful to let you know about them. I can’t help it if your boss changes his plans around.
I was trying to be accommodating but if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is. See you some time-I shall always be glad to see you-but it takes two to arrange a meeting.
Love,
Fred
Email
From:
[email protected]
Date:
18 July
To:
Fred, [email protected]
Subject:
Re: Yemen trip
Fred,
Please come back to me.
Mary
31
Extract from Peter Maxwell’s unpublished autobiography
Now I come to one of the most difficult chapters in a political life that has never been without its challenges. I must speak of events which transcended political life. No Aristotle, no Shakespeare, no writer that I can think of has had to describe events such as I will now write of. I do not aspire to their talents. I am simply a modest journalist who has found himself drawn into the centre of events which have changed this country, perhaps the world, for ever. I must do the best I can, with my limi
ted powers, to help my readers understand what happened.
It all started so well.
The boss was in holiday mood. It had been a bad week in the House of Commons, and when he finally got to the plane he was almost behaving like a small boy who has been let out of school early. On the flight out to Sana’a it was, nevertheless, mostly work. We had to prep for a private meeting with the Yemeni president, and there were one or two other tasks to be dealt with, but four hours into the flight Jay loosened his tie, stretched his arms and said, ‘Peter, is there some of that Oyster Bay Sauvignon in the fridge?’
I went and opened a bottle and brought back a couple of glasses.
I loved it when it was just the boss and me on a trip. It didn’t happen often. There was usually some irritating third person, like the Cabinet secretary or some other civil servant, and the boss wouldn’t be able to unwind. He never trusted those people. They were always resigning and writing their memoirs, and anything careless he said in front of them would end up in print. When he and I were alone like this, I think a lot of the real business of government was mapped out. We used to noodle around the big ideas: what to do with the National Health Service; where we stand on China; why should ASBOs have a lower age limit at all? It was creative stuff. I loved it, and the boss had many of his big ideas after these sessions with me.
On this trip it was just the two of us again. I don’t mean that literally. In the back of the plane was a carefully selected group of media people to cover the launch of the Yemen salmon project; there were the security people; there were communications people. But there were only two real players on the plane on that trip-the boss and me. We sat up at the front, in a private part of the cabin.
