‘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.
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.