2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (27 page)
Read 2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen Online
Authors: Paul Torday,Prefers to remain anonymous
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:
Mary, [email protected]
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.
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
From:
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
From:
Familysupportgroup.gov.uk
Date:
21 December
To:
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].
From:
Date:
21 December
To:
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?
From:
Date:
3 January
To:
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 our 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.
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?
Interrogator:
No, I have not dined at the Ritz.
Alfred Jones:
If you ever do, you’ll understand that I felt, even in my best dark suit, rather shabby, and I was glad when I saw the sheikh arriving, clad as usual in his white robes and followed by a respectful maître d’hotel.
‘Good evening, Dr Alfred,’ said the sheikh as I rose from my seat to greet him. ‘You are early. You must be hungry. Good.’ He sat in the chair the maître d’hotel had drawn out for him and ordered a whisky and soda for himself and a glass of champagne for me. I remember the sheikh turned to me and told me how good the food was there. I said I felt sure it was, and the sheikh nodded and said, ‘I know it is. The chef who now works here in the hotel used to work for me at my houses in London and Glen Tulloch, but I think he became bored with just cooking for me, and of course many weeks he was on his own when I was in the Yemen or elsewhere. So I understood when he accepted the offer of a job here, and of course I can still come and sample his cooking. I often do.’
The drinks arrived and, with them, Harriet. I had not seen her for weeks. She had gone back to work at Fitzharris & Price but then had experienced something that I think must have been close to a nervous breakdown. Now she spent most of her time living at home with her parents, working from a laptop in her father’s study. My first impression was how pale and thin she was. Then she smiled at us, and her smile brought a lump to my throat. She still looked very pretty, despite her worn out air. I felt a great wave of pity mixed with desire sweep across me. I remember thinking, Desire? I am fifteen years her senior, for God’s sake.
‘You are off to a good start,’ she said, looking at my glass. ‘Yes, please, the same for me, if it is what I think it is.’
‘The Krug ‘85,’ murmured the wine waiter who had handed us our drinks and was waiting for further orders. ‘His Excellency orders no other champagne.’
‘I didn’t know there was any other kind,’ said the sheikh. He smiled at us, and then there was the business of menus being handed round. Once this was done and orders had been taken, the sheikh raised his glass and said, ‘A toast!
To my friends, Dr Alfred and Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, who have worked without pause, who have set aside every difficulty both small and great—some difficulties, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, have been very great for you, very great indeed—and have succeeded against all odds in bringing my project to this point.’
He raised his glass and drank to us. I saw the people at the next table gazing at the unusual, but in that place perhaps not unknown, spectacle of a sheikh drinking from a large tumbler of whisky and soda. He may have been aware of such glances, but they meant nothing to him.
I, in turn, raised my glass and said, ‘To the project, Sheikh Muhammad, to its successful launch and its great future, and to the vision that inspired it!’
Harriet and I drank to the sheikh and he inclined his head in acknowledgement and smiled again. ‘To the project!’ he repeated.
This was our celebration dinner. The sheikh had suggested it a few days ago, after a project review meeting at Harriet’s office. Everything was now ready. I had been out on a final tour of inspection in June. The holding tanks had been built, as had the channels that led from them into the Wadi Aleyn. Water had been pumped from the aquifer into the holding tanks, and they had been leak tested. The sluice gates had been tested. The oxygenation equipment, which would keep the salmon alive when the temperature rose, also worked. The heat exchangers, designed to cool the water in the holding basins when the sunlight reached them, were fine. All the equipment had been checked and rechecked. We had run, and rerun, our computer models a hundred times. Nothing had been left to chance, except the great chance of the project itself.